


The Pariah of Sky Lake

by vicenarian



Category: Jim Mason - Fandom, The Tribes of Palos Verdes (2017)
Genre: Angst, Brag Rag, Cleaning Toilets for Mama, Cold Weather People, Drinking to Cope, Drug Addiction, Gen, Go Fish Induced Stockholm Syndrome, It's a twin thing, Long Live Jim Mason, Navel-Gazing, Other, What Are 'Healthy Boundaries' for $500, Wolverines, You Can't Fucking Surf Here, big winter waves, endless aesthetic, fucko, lonely fandom, no more Lancôme hydrate, sponsored by the People's Coalition for more Cody Fern movies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 23:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19283692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vicenarian/pseuds/vicenarian
Summary: Jim’s story. What really happened to the Mason tribe.





	1. Sirius

**Author's Note:**

> Although points in this story acknowledge certain events & details from the movie, it is primarily told with the Palos Verdes novel canon in mind. If you haven’t read Joy Nicholson’s book, I highly recommend doing so before reading this. It will make the feelz that much stronger.

We’re dead. If you’ve heard about us at all, my sister would have told you that much. It’s the only detail that matters. What she won’t say is that it was by her own hand. She conceived of a way to get rid of us, and she acted on it. The perfect ending to her story.

We made it easy enough. Turns out, it doesn’t take long to dismantle a family. It just takes an inciting incident, like the whiff of a stranger’s perfume on the car’s leather seat or being caught in the lie of working late. It’s the lit match that catches the whole house on fire. Houses burn down faster these days, built of cheap and quickly manufactured material. There isn’t much time to get out.

Medina killed us because that’s what made it easiest to walk away. It’s the only thing that could set her free. I don’t dismiss her pain, but there’s no real healing for the person who kills their family. And besides, I’ve got bad news for my sister: we’re alive.

We’re alive and she’s not Frieda Zane.

 

***

The move was inevitable, though I was surprised we ended up back in Michigan. Just like my mother I was eager to get away, the further the better, and Michigan seemed about as far from California as we could get. Neither of us had considered the climate when we arrived in early June. The heat was less oppressive, the air refreshing – everything had the feeling of starting over. But once fall came, we caught that first sharp scent of winter air and remembered. We also caught our first flu.

“At least there’s no incessant waves pounding in our ears,” my mother tried to console us as we sat huddled on the couch, shaking with fevers and cold chills. “That nearly drove me crazy.”

Once we recovered, the air only got colder until the first snowfall. Then all attempts at consolation turned into the familiar pattern of disdain. It didn’t take long for Mom to start in, cursing the amount of snow we had to brush off the car any time we needed to go someplace. She blamed it on the lake effect, which was more noticeable in our new hometown.

We settled in Sky Lake, a small town neighboring one of the larger cities off the shores of Lake Michigan. A lesser-known tourist destination, our family used to take weekend trips here years ago when me and Medina were little. We would rent one of the rustic, homey cabins and spend the whole day in the water and all evening around a fire. Sometimes I would catch glances of the way my dad looked at my mom in the firelight. Remnants of affection were still resident, even though he also watched the girls in bikinis lounging in the day. My mother never noticed him watching her, only his wandering eyes.

Mom and I found a modest place in our new hometown, purchased with the money from the divorce settlement. It’s nice enough, though it’s nothing like the palatial Great Lakes homes. And nothing at all like the relative mansion my father lives in.

My mother blames the lawyer for not squeezing more out of Phil. We were left with more than enough money, even though my dad cancelled all the credit cards with SANDY MASON embossed on them. He wasn’t convinced that designer bedsheets qualified as a basic need, even if they were hypoallergenic. I don’t tell her that he gave a credit card to me, issued with my name. I haven’t ever used it and don’t intend to. Phil thinks money can fix everything.

Mom took what she could and then we were gone. I think she had entirely forgotten about her idealized Minnesota, which she was so stuck on before the split. Returning to Michigan was the first thing that came to her mind once she heard about Dad’s proposal to Ava last Christmas. I don’t think she thought twice about it, her only goal being to get away. She wanted to leave as soon as we could pack but I convinced her to wait, for Medina’s sake. Things were already tense enough between the three of us, and I knew my sister wouldn’t want to move during the last semester of her senior year. Especially not to a place where she couldn’t even surf.

In the end it didn’t matter when we moved, or where. Medina was never going to go with us.

 

***

The snow is relentless. I groan as I roll over, squinting at the intensely white world outside the window. There’s a familiar heaviness in my head. It feels like lidocaine has been injected straight into my brain, filling my skull with a fuzzy numbness.

“Oh, good,” my mom exclaims as she comes into the room. “You’re up.”

Mom is wearing a forest-green vest with her name stitched in red above the upper left pocket. This is the standard uniform for all employees at Berringer’s, the local grocery store where she works. She tells everyone that her ex-husband left her destitute with a son at home to raise, and that it was all so abrupt she could only secure menial labor to support us. At least that’s what David thinks, my mother’s boss and the owner of the store.

David Berringer is probably ten years older than my mom, slightly overweight and balding. He maintains a prominent mustache to make up for it. Mom is a little taller than him and far better-looking, even if she’s not as thin as she used to be.

It’s not as bad as Medina makes it sound. Mom’s even lost some weight since moving here, though that probably has something to do with David. She’s been seeing him a couple nights a week, and has even stopped taking her antidepressants.

I can tell that David likes her, and that she likes having the attention. I don’t think either of them realizes that they’re using each other to feel good about themselves. And if I know one thing, it’s that my mother is fickle. He’ll be out of our lives eventually and, just like our move across the country, the sooner the better.

“Hey Jimmy, I thought we could watch a movie tonight,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “A little evening to ourselves.”

I would complain about her busting in like this, if only it wasn’t her room. I have two usual spots: curled up at the foot of the bed or tangled in a nest of blankets on the floor. Today it’s the latter.

I get up when my mother starts firing off all the reasons she thinks it’d be a good night for me to stay in. From the icy roads to subzero temperatures, and how pale I’ve been looking lately. These aren’t the reasons she had in Palos Verdes, when there were checks to forge and schemes to make on how to spend my father’s money. In P.V. my group of friends, the Bayboys, my sister and surfing were all vying for my time. There’s none of that here, so the best she can do is turn the weather into our new enemy. She doesn’t realize that I don’t need reasons anymore. I won’t put up a fight.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I say, cutting her off mid-sentence. “I’m gonna go to Devon’s for a while first – what time do you want me back?”

“Better make it five.”

I glance at the clock, noting it’s already after three.

“Fine,” she sighs. “Six. But not a minute later – we haven’t gotten to spend much time together this week.”

 

***

She’s not wrong about the roads. Even the main drag in front of our house is compacted with ice and snow, worn smooth as glass by the traffic flow. I decide to walk, even though I passed my driver’s test and got a car in September. Michigan has a law against letting anyone under eighteen take a driver’s exam unless they’ve gone through training and gotten temporary certifications beforehand. When we got here, it just seemed easier to wait until after my birthday than to go through the expensive courses. As a result I really haven’t driven much. Especially not in the snow.

Devon lives close by, but I don’t actually have plans to see him. I can’t tell if I consider him more of a connection than a friend. Our interactions nearly always end in some form of transaction. He refers to girls as “bitches” and is a caricature of the lower-middle class, wannabe tough guy. It would almost be funny, if he wasn’t utterly committed to that image. He feels threatened by the fact that I used to live in Los Angeles. I don’t think he’s ever traveled outside of Michigan.

I first met Devon when we were in elementary school. He hadn’t quite grown into the chauvinistic prick that he is now, so we had more in common. Like Lunchables and cartoons. He didn’t come from the greatest home, but I remember having a lot of mischievous fun together. We’d split cans of beer that we had stolen from his stepfather, and cigarettes we pulled from his mother’s unattended packs. We lost touch in middle school when his family moved out of the district. That was the last time we talked, until this summer.

I close my eyes for a second as I think back to then, trying to will the memory of sunshine and warmth onto my skin. The air is so cold and dry now that the snow makes a squeaking sound beneath my boots. I want to hypnotize myself with the sound, shutting out all other thought. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. It works until I think of goofyfoot – Medina surfing backdoor and showing up all the Bayboys. I suppress the impulse to smile at the memory, fixating my mind on the summer.

 

***

_We’d only been in Sky Lake for a week. Most of our things were still in storage boxes, though we didn’t bring much. Nearly all of the furniture and décor Mom had purchased on Dad’s dime were sold along with the house on Via Neve. The things that she had deemed so important, so vital to our quality of life, were easily auctioned off for their cash value._

_Mom was brimming with optimism, an almost deranged cheerfulness. She laughed as we ate microwaved single-serve meals and slept on musty blankets in our empty living room. Though I knew the unknown frightened her, she tried to make it sound like we were living a life of excitement, the beginnings of an adventure. There was lots of talk about how much better off we were, how our lives could really begin now. She would plant a garden and we would renew our bodies and minds with the earth’s purest food. She would find a fabulous job and we’d never want for anything again._

_I’d come to Michigan with some fantasies of my own. The last of the pills had run out the day before, which I had been preparing myself for. I moved to a place with no connections, no friends. I wanted to get better if for no other reason than to show Medina that I could, purely of my own will. The drugs may have widened the gap between us, but it wasn’t the cause. I wanted to prove that sad truth to myself and to my sister. We’re on opposing sides of this civil war._

_I managed to get away for a few hours one day and walk the short mile to the eponymous Sky Lake. The closer I got to the water, the more run-down the houses became. It wasn’t at all like the quaint camping spot that my family used to visit. Suddenly I had greater perspective on where we were versus where we’d come from. Though we were far from the most affluent family in Palos Verdes, we were certainly living comfortably. This side of Sky Lake was a comparative slum. Even the most coveted of lakeview homes here would be considered little more than sheds back in P.V._

_A small plot of land sat between a few of the houses, demarking a public park. A paint-chipped jungle gym was planted in the center, one squeaky swing swaying in the breeze. Dusk had just begun to fall, but already the park was deserted._

_I found a busted picnic table near the water, boards splintered and covered with seagull droppings. It was fitted with rusted screws to a cement slab which local kids had graffitied with curses. Everything about the place had a hangdog posture, especially the willow trees that buckled menacingly over the edge of the water. The beach was narrow, filthy. The lawn cut abruptly in a jagged line that suddenly dropped off into the brown, gritty sand. It looked more like a mud pit than a beach. No threshers were roaming these shores daily to purify the sand. We definitely hadn’t settled in the brochure-worthy region._

_“Hey,” someone calls to me across the yard, sending a flock of squawking ducks off into the safety of the water. “Keep it moving, queer.”_

_The guy talking is surrounded by a group of five, maybe six others. The sun had only just disappeared beyond the horizon, making it difficult to get a good look at them. I’m eager to move on without a fight, but prepared for one nonetheless. I’d done my fair share in P.V., back when I had a turf to defend. But I didn’t feel any ownership of this place. Frankly, I couldn’t see how anyone would._

_I square up to the group of strangers as they draw closer. “Not much to look at anyway.”_

_I drop my cigarette on the cement slab, stamping it out as the burliest of the bunch, the one who shouted to me, steps up._

_“I don’t give a shit what you think, just get off our beach.”_

_I knew all about localism – defending Lunada Bay was a way of life for the Bayboys. The only thing that mattered was being a local, and that was still barely enough to grant me acceptance. It was even harder for Medina, being the only girl who wanted to surf Lunada. Really surf, not pose like the towel girls and use it as an excuse for the boys to fawn all over them._

_In California the fight for territory made sense. Here, it felt like fighting for fighting’s sake. And I couldn’t stop myself from pushing back. The burly guy was so close to me now that I could smell the alcohol on his breath and make out his exaggerated, neanderthalic features._

_“I didn’t touch the beach – I’m standing in a public park,” I fire back. “And if you want to get technical this looks more like a nuclear wasteland, which would explain what’s wrong with your face.”_

_Even in the dim light, I see the neanderthal’s face turn a deep purple shade as he reaches forward to snatch me by my jacket. I manage to evade his lumbering grasp, jumping backwards as one of his buddies speaks up._

_“Hold up!” Another guy, skinnier than the rest, shouts above the chorus of angry voices that echo through the park. “I think I know him.”_

_The howls and threats from the rest of the gang quiet down as the skinny guy pushes past the bulky one and comes closer to me._

_“Jim?” he says, greeting me. “It’s me, Devon. Devon Acosta?”_

_He mentioned the name of our old school and then realization dawned on me. I wasn’t sure how he recognized me after so many years – he looked nothing like I remembered him. He was a timid kid, small for his age with pinched, serious features. Now he was all limbs and angles, his face speckled with acne and tattoos covering his arms._

_“How you been, man? I heard you guys moved to Cali or something.”_

_“Yeah, we did.”_

_The rest of the gang have backed down, though I can still see fumes emanating from the burly guy. He stares at me from behind Devon’s shoulder like a rabid dog behind an unhinged gate._

_“So whatchu doing back here?” Devon asks. “Just visiting an old haunt or what? Can’t imagine you California types get homesick for a place like this.”_

_I want to ask what he means by California types, but figure the answer is probably just as indecipherable._

_“Me and my mom just moved back.”_

_“Uh oh, trouble in paradise? Does that mean Ms. Mason is now open for business?” His laughter is backed up by a few of his crew. “I hope she got a good lawyer – bankin’ that doctor money.”_

_I shrug, unsure of what to say. Devon reaches into one of the deep pockets of his low-slung jeans, pulling out a lighter. From somewhere behind him a joint is produced by one of his friends and he lights it up, taking a long drag before extending it towards me._

_“Wanna toke?” he croaks through the smoke held in his chest._

_I hesitate for a moment, thinking about the empty pill bottle at home and all the reasons I was determined to keep it that way. I say yes, taking the crudely rolled joint from Devon’s hand and dragging on it. As I inhale, smoke fills my lungs and softens the tension in my mind. I start to forget all the reasons._

_Devon’s lake slum gang call themselves the Wolverines – some home state pride thing. Apparently real wolverines are also territorial and ornery, so it fits as well as anything. After the tension subsided during the first few moments of our encounter, Devon and the rest of the Wolverines invited me to stay with them on the beachfront, swapping illicit substances and explicit stories. Shawn, the big guy who wanted to rearrange my face, even ended up calming down enough to join in the fun._

_They each regaled me with their fondest tales of petty theft and vandalism. Most of them seemed a lot older than me and Devon – a few had even served jailtime. I learned that since moving to Sky Lake with his mother, Devon had been in and out of juvie before dropping out of high school his sophomore year. He’s been living on his own ever since, which has essentially consisted of crashing with various friends until Tyler took him in._

_“So where’s Tyler tonight?” I ask, taking a swig from the bottle of whisky passed to me._

_“Currently taking monitored visits at our finest state prison,” snickered Levi, one of the gang._

_Devon shoots Levi a warning look before continuing. “He got taken in on trafficking charges. Two years come March,” he says matter-of-factly, tossing the butt of his cigarette into the lake. “I’m holding down the ranks ‘til he gets out.”_

_One of the guys near me whispers underneath his breath. “Yeah, and other things.”_

_“What was that?” Devon turns, fixing his stare._

_“Nothing,” the guy says, keeping his eyes cast downward._

_I learned later that while Tyler’s been locked-up, Devon’s been living at his house where Tyler’s girlfriend, Amanda, also lives. Apparently everyone knows they’re sleeping together. Everyone except Tyler._

 

***

Everything is quieter in a cold place. People only venture out when absolutely necessary, and everything outdoors is thoroughly abandoned. The park is entirely mine. Even the animals are hunkered down, keeping close against the cold. On the rare occasion that a stray car or the occasional deer passes by, the snow absorbs nearly all sound. I almost don’t notice an old truck that ambles down the backroad behind me until I smell a cloud of diesel smoke.

I stay still at the entrance of the park, behind the row of trees planted along the perpendicular parking. I’m invisible in the shadows. The longer I stand under the trees, the brighter it becomes around me as night falls and my eyes adjust to the lighting shift. Night comes early in the winter, after days that are never truly bright. If snow covers the ground, a strange blue-light illuminates everything, almost like the day and night trade places.

The whole sky is an infinite grey sea, and nothing but the hazy outline of the moon pierces through. I don’t mind the lack of color. I think about Medina’s star, Sirius, and where it hides from its obscured position above.

It was shining so bright that night, the last night. Medina probably thinks I don’t remember, but I do. Even if I forget for a little while, one glance back at the night sky reminds me. Whether or not I want it to, and whether or not it’s shining.

I wanted to give her something that would last, that we could share no matter where we were. Something our father couldn’t buy and our mother couldn’t distort. I thought I could keep us together with little things like that. But she was already leaving. Already gone.

Medina was the one who told me about tribes. If you leave, you die. Period.

The air is blue and the ground is white. Everything else has turned into black, featureless shapes. Even me, as I move away from the cover of trees and closer to the water’s edge. The water is mostly frozen now, though there hasn’t been a freeze deep enough to trust the ice. That’s what David says, when he tells my mother he’ll take her ice fishing. He doesn’t know it, but inside my mom is rolling her eyes. There’s no way she’ll ever go, much less enjoy herself. I don’t know what makes her feel like she has to lie, smiling and agreeing that yes, they must go.

I test the surface with my foot, applying small amounts of increasing pressure until I am confident enough to leave the shore. I take a few steps then stop, noticing something glinting on the glassy surface a few feet away. Shuffling towards it slowly, I nudge the object with the toe of my shoe, pulling back suddenly when I realize what it is. A fish has floated up, dead on its side, encased in the ice around it. There’s a hollow where it’s eye should be, picked clean and staring up into the starless sky.

For the first time since leaving the house I feel truly cold. My teeth chatter and my frozen fingers fumble senselessly with the bottlecap. I pour carefully into my palm, willing my muscles to cease their convulsions for this delicate exchange. An army of capsules enters my mouth past my numb lips – a sneak attack while the enemy sleeps. They’re here to wage war on my mind.

  _You die. Period._

I wonder if my sister understands that there’s more than one way to leave.

 

***

I can only stand the cold for so long. California did something to my blood, and I’m not sure I can re-learn the elements of this place. The body remembers, but rebels.

I start in on the milelong journey back home, but everything feels disconnected and uncertain. A mild but dense snow has started to fall, coating the ground in a uniform sheet. I feel disoriented even walking the simple path back to our house. Streetlights were banned by the city ordinance in P.V., but most are just burned out here. The snow gives a reflective light but it isn’t very far-reaching. This confusion is coupled with the effects of the pills – I can barely remember to breathe properly let alone coordinate my limbs up streets of snow and ice.

I’m muttering to myself like a lunatic, fully aware of this and yet unable to stop or truly care. When I finally arrive at our doorstep I feel triumphant, almost acting on the impulse to bolt down the road towards the lake again. My thoughts are racing, stupid. I breathe in and out, focusing my mind before opening the back door.

 _You can do this,_ I prime myself. _Just act normal._

I timidly try the door handle, finding it unlocked. My heart is pounding like I’m some espionage agent breaking into a vault. It’s guilt, I realize, as my eye catches the clock in the corner. Eight-thirty. Eight-thirty? My brain struggles to recall – when did I leave? What time did I say I’d be back?

I’m standing in the front room, rubbing my eyes over and over again, trying to remember. But the only words running through my brain are from some stray piece of music, subconsciously leaked to the forefront: _It’s okay to eat fish ‘cuz they don’t have any feelings._

“Jimmy?”

I hear my mother down the hall, but I’m not ready for her yet.

“Baby, is that you?”

 _Baby._ Like Heather used to call me. When I’d lift her up in the shallows of the water, pressing her body next to mine. I remember the need, wanting something she could never give me. She’d never say my real name, just that pet name she’d used before with all her other boyfriends, and all the ones to come.

My mother stands at the doorway now, crossing her arms.

“It’s about time you showed up. Where have you been?”

Mercifully, she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s go, I’ve got the movie ready.”

“Okay, Mom,” I say, toeing out of my sneakers.

When my feet touch the carpet, I realize my socks are soaked through. I should really buy a pair of winter boots. I look down where my shoes landed and something feels off. I notice an unfamiliar pair of sturdy-made, well-worn men’s boots. Ignoring my sodden feet, I trace the path of my mother’s footsteps.

In the living room I hear voices, but they aren’t coming from the TV. My mother is laughing, curling under a blanket next to David who’s sitting on our sofa. It’s more of a loveseat, really – the largest piece of furniture we could fit into our vehicle from Goodwill. It’s one of three pieces in the entire living room, the other being a set of mismatched and threadbare armchairs. My mom never wants me to sit alone in one of the chairs, always coercing me onto the couch with her. Tonight, it seems, is an exception.

“Jimmy, I was just telling David about the movie. Don’t worry, I didn’t spoil anything.” She turns to David again. “Jim is always getting after me for ruining endings…”

Mom is firing on all cylinders, trying to charm this guy. She doesn’t see that she doesn’t need to try that hard with him. She could be polishing off a carton of Oreos and bitching at him for working late – it’d still top any night he’s had with a woman in the past fifteen years. But David is playing his best hand, too. He’s smiling at all her little quirks and neuroses, which he will soon silently curse and grow to hate.

Something dings from the other end of the house.

“Oh! Popcorn’s ready!” my mom chirps from David’s lap. She leaps up with dutiful energy. “Be right back.”

For a fleeting second I’m faced with the prospect of being alone with David. I have yet to fully enter the living room, instead hovering awkwardly by the entryway even as my mom breezes past.

“I’ll help,” I mutter as I turn quickly after her and away from the intruder in our living room.

My mom must have been floating for how quickly she reached the kitchen. I traipse after her, my glare following ahead of me. I find her humming mindlessly at the microwave, gingerly tearing open the packet of low-sodium popcorn and pouring it into a waiting bowl.

I stare at the back of her head, unsure of what I want to say. She knows I’m there, just waiting. She knows what I’m waiting for. A glance over her shoulder.

“What, Jim?” she asks brusquely, pet names aside.

“I thought tonight was ‘our night’,” I hiss, using her words.

She glares at me over the bowl of health-conscious snack food. I see the chocolate stains on the dessert plates when I do dishes, the cookie dough caked between fork prongs and gummy smears of ice cream stuck in cereal bowls. I see the empty chip bags and cookie boxes when I take out the trash. Why does she have to pretend for this guy?

“I am your _mother_ , young man,” she asserts through gritted teeth. “I suggest you put on your happy face and watch the damn movie.”

The air crackles; she readjusts her face. “Come on, I know you wanted to watch this one.”

She’s tried the flippant route, then the stern parental, and finally the fun-time appeaser. But underneath it all her eyes are begging me.

“Fine,” I say.

My thoughts are liquid, loose and warm. I can barely grasp anything beyond this moment. I reach for the cupboard above the stove, the one she’s barely tall enough to open. Pulling down a bottle of brown liquor, I also grab one of the short glasses from the adjacent cabinet. Kit in hand, I plaster on a smile as forced as hers.

“Family movie night,” I practically spit at her, raising my glass.

She maneuvers around me out of the kitchen, back down the hall at a pace I can’t imitate. When I enter the living room again she’s already flipped off all the lights, leaving me stumbling towards my chair in the dark as the opening credits roll. The bottle clinks against the rim of my cup as I pour, and I sense David’s eyes on me.

He knows I’m only eighteen. I know that my mother wouldn’t have told her beau that she buys for her minor son. But I refuse to hide in my own home. The sooner he knows the better. Then he’ll be gone, and I can get on with the task of picking up the pieces.

 

***

Mom is throwing a blanket over me, simultaneously plucking the bottle out from between my body and the armrest. I’m conscious, aware of where I am and what’s happening, but my eyes are too heavy to lift open. They flutter unsuccessfully before snapping tight again. My chest feels sunken in; my breathing is shallow.

A stranger’s hushed voice is nearby.

“I’m worried, Sandy.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” my mother replies. “He barely drank anything. Two baby drinks, tops. Knocked him right out.”

“It’s not really the amount…” David trails off. “Someone his age shouldn’t be drinking. At all.”

The room goes quiet. Even though my eyes are closed, I can tell exactly what my mother’s face looks like at this moment. Mouth smiling but agape, her brow knotted in disbelief.

“David,” she laughs. “I mean, didn’t you ever, ya know… _experiment_ as a kid?”

“Sure, but–”

“Well, that’s all this is.”

David tries to make another point but is stopped cold by my mother’s warning voice.

“Jim’s been through a lot this year,” she says, clipped and low. “More than you know.”

Her voice is steady. I can feel the blood rise to my cheeks as I listen. She’s still on my side, no matter how much she likes this guy’s attention.

I realize I’m holding my breath, bracing for the heated debate. That’s what all conversations digressed to between my parents, whether they were speaking quietly through barred teeth or screaming until they both went hoarse. But all tension breaks when David speaks next.

He moves towards her, voice muffled as he holds her. “I can’t imagine what it’s been like, for either of you. I only want what’s best for you going forward.”

I can feel my mother’s defenses lowering, all the prickly barbs retreating as she sighs, tells him she knows he cares. He makes her promise to let him know if he ever crosses the line. He tells her that the last thing he wants is to make her feel like she’s being judged or controlled.

“I’m nothing like him,” David whispers against her hair.

She holds him back, completely unarmed. “I know.”

 

***

Dad calls the next day. It’s been six months since the move, and as many months since I last talked to my sister. Medina must talk to Dad about it, because he finds a way to bring it up every time he phones. Our conversations are not often and never long, but we’re on speaking terms again. He sees that as a good thing.

“A step towards wholeness,” he quotes my old therapist.

He and my mother even occasionally exchange words, which is the perfect description of what their talks are like. Very to-the-point, factual interchanges. I don’t know if they do it for me and Medina’s sake, but it’s almost worse than silence. Sometimes I see tears well up in my mother’s eyes before she can get off the phone.

I only heard them argue once after we came here. Dad wasn’t pleased with Mom for pulling me out of treatment last February, and the disagreement followed us more than two thousand miles across the country.

“We were moving anyway, Phil. I needed his help packing and getting the house ready to sell.”

My mom is pacing her bedroom, phone on speaker as she pointedly enunciates into the receiver. What she won’t tell my dad is that I was the one to rationalize these points to her first.

“And who’s idea was it to move in the first place, _Sandy_ ,” my dad copies the use of first names, uttered like profanity between them. “God, it’s like you don’t even think before acting on your impulses.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she mocks. “I forgot I’m talking to the master of foresight and self-control. After all, you did wait a whole _three months_ after your son’s overdose to propose to your side piece.”

A silence of great restraint follows; the air simmers.

“Look, the only reason I called was to find out what the plan is now that you’re settled. I know a few practicing psychiatrists near St. Joseph. I could get him an appointment as early as next week.”

My mother is immovable. “It’s too soon, Phil.”

“What’s too soon? Is he even looking for work? It’s not good for him to just lay around all day.”

My blood boils. I know how he wanted to finish that sentence – _like you_. His greatest fear was for me to end up like her. Sick to my stomach, I want to pry myself away from the door but I can’t stop listening.

“You aren’t with him every day,” she fires back. “He’s been going out, reconnecting with old friends… He needs a gap year.”   

“Oh come on – a _gap year_?” My father scoffs. “What do you know about these friends?”

“I know what’s best for my son. When I want your advice, I’ll let you know.”

She disconnects the call before he can launch into the next protest. She put on a brave face for as long as she had to, but in the quiet of the house I see the mask falter. I pull myself away then, unable to watch her cry.

After that argument my mother didn’t take Dad’s calls for a while. I think he decided from then on it was better to privately disagree with her choices than to lose all contact. A don’t-rock-the-boat philosophy.

Medina and I were old enough when my parents separated that the courts granted our preference when it came to custodial arrangements. I chose my mother, but it was a shock to my dad when Medina did, too. She didn’t have to say it, but I know she stayed for me.

She would’ve gone with Dad in a heartbeat. I saw the collage she made after my father moved out. Cut from the society page of the _Palos Verdes Gazette_ , my father smiling with that woman, Ava, and Medina’s yearbook photo glued against the backdrop of their prized palazzo.

Now that we’re eighteen we don’t have to stay with anyone. We’re the masters of our own destiny, and that’s how Medina prefers it. Nobody won or lost the custody battle for her. She never truly wanted to be with any of us.

When I think about the world, it scares me. I don’t understand the way it works or why anyone bothers to give it meaning. That’s why it doesn’t matter to me how crazy or fucked up my family is, because I can understand it. I know that world. I don’t care how small it becomes.

 

***

“It’s a simple concept – calories in, calories out. I don’t know why you’re fighting me about this.”

“I’m not fighting you, Mom.”

I’m sitting in the living room, this time on the loveseat with my mother, at her insistence. The TV is blaring one of those daytime talk shows, and all the celebrity hosts are yakking at the same time. It’s as absurd as the cartoons I used to watch with Medina, except those are supposed to be ridiculous. I don’t find the humor in any of it anymore, so I just let Mom choose what to watch. 

A bag of Hostess donuts is perched on her lap as she analyzes the nutritional content. In the not-so-distant past this entire package would’ve constituted one serving, all thought of healthiness aside. But Mom’s in a different zone lately.

“I just don’t want you getting obsessed with it again,” I say.

I think of my favorite photo of my mother from her modeling days, the one in the white frame. She looks so elegant, smiling so prettily. But I remember what she told me about the exercise classes, the diet pills and constant nagging from the agency. She said she would smile for the photographers, but on the inside she was dying.

I watch my mother’s face carefully. I’ve accidentally used a trigger word – one of my father’s words – to express my concern. In this house, obsession is synonymous with lunacy. I quickly attempt to rebound.

“I think you’re perfect. I’ve always thought that, no matter what you look like.”

Her eyes soften, so I continue.

“If you want to go on a diet that’s fine, I just want to make sure you’re doing it for you – not somebody else.”

“Oh, baby,” she melts like butter. “Is that what you’re worried about? Well you can just put your mind at ease. David isn’t like your father.”

She sets the bag of donuts on the coffee table, not eating a single one. “I’m doing this for me.”

My mother has been unfairly represented. Medina chose to focus on her lack of self-control, which is also my father’s favorite complaint. He was more than happy to gloss over the equally dangerous level of restraint of which she is also capable. But a former model who’s still able to fit into a size two doesn’t raise any red flags. As long as she could turn heads, garner compliments and be the trophy wife hanging off his arm at public functions, my father was satisfied. It didn’t matter the means by which she maintained her figure, the number of meals she skipped or how often she fainted in the shower. My father had a reputation to uphold.

It was only when she realized that she could never be beautiful enough for him – that there was always another woman younger and skinnier who would draw his eyes away – that she quit trying. That’s when the eating started, fueled by a hunger that could never be satisfied. It was part revenge, part rebellion, but it was brought on by the same feelings that caused her to starve herself: a deficit of love, doled out on the basis of her looks.

Mom turns her attention back to the book she was reading, some miracle diet that claims to have all the answers. She’s pawing through the meal plan index, trying to sort out what we should have for dinner this week. She wonders out loud if David likes tilapia.

 

***

Five to seven inches. That’s what the radio is promising. I’m sitting in Devon’s car watching the tiny, dry snowflakes. It doesn’t seem possible that this languid dusting could accumulate that much, but the weather forecasters know better than me. It will come.

The blower is forcing heat at top speed against the windshield, but it still isn’t enough to keep the ice crystals from forming. My toes are numb, sitting dead in my boots. My new shoes are good for keeping moisture out, but do nothing to keep heat in. At least I got it partway right. I glance back at the house, waiting for Devon to come out already.

We’re on a drop-off. I’m not officially part of Devon’s crew, but I’ve been finding myself in the passenger’s seat on an increasing number of jobs. I’ve let him use my car a few times too, when paranoia convinced him that it wasn’t safe to drive his own. I don’t mind, especially if it lends me extended credit.

Devon likes to pretend that we’re friends, even going through the pretense of inviting me to every party the Wolverines throw. But nobody’s really Devon’s friend. There’s a catalog a mile long in his mind, constantly shifting with who owes him what. Money, favors, drugs, girls – everyone has bartering value. Some get more return for the investment.

“God, what’s taking him so long?” Amanda asks from the back seat, unlit cigarette perched between her teeth. I watch her big doe eyes scan me in the rearview mirror.

I’ve decided that my currency lately is being amusing to Amanda. She’s in her mid-twenties, Tyler’s age. She’s stuck by his side for years in varying degrees of fidelity, through varying lengths of incarceration. Despite her aura of unwashed mania, Amanda is beautiful. I can see how Devon was tempted.

Devon told me that he was Amanda’s pet when he first moved in with her and Tyler, which became less than platonic after Tyler went away for this current sentence. But Amanda is wild and fickle. More than once I’ve looked up to catch Devon staring daggers into me, only to notice Amanda and her friends whispering from some corner, pointing in my direction.

I hear the flick of a lighter and soon the cab is filling with smoke. I crack my window a sliver and watch the puffy cloud slip outside and disperse on the wind. My eyes dart to the door where I last saw Devon. He’s been gone longer than this usually takes.

I pat the front pocket of my pants, feeling for the oblong pills. I try to slip one out undetected, moving it to my mouth. Amanda’s voice is suddenly very close, smoking pouring from her mouth and curling in front of my eyes.

“Whatcha got there, Cool Hand?”

The pet name Amanda christened me with, something about my eyes being as blue as Paul Newman’s. I swallow the pill dry, trying for nonchalance.

“Nothing,” I say unconvincingly.

From the corner of my eye I watch her lean into the front seat, coming so close that the features of her face are blurry. Her wavy blonde hair falls forward, tickling my hand as she takes the cigarette from between her lips and places it in mine. The filter tastes like lipstick.

“Doesn’t look like nothin’,” she breathes into my ear.

Her fingers slide over my forearm, past all personal space into the pocket of my jeans. I go still as she deftly retrieves the small plastic bag, holding it up between us for a moment. I watch her pry the little zip lock open and pinch a capsule between two nail polished fingers. The fingers disappear into the backseat, coming back empty.

I take a drag on the cigarette and hold it out to her in exchange for the baggie. She’s leaning even further into the front now, affording me a better view. Smiling, she drops the bag in my lap and plucks her menthol Newport from my hand.

“Thanks for sharing,” she smirks, eyeing me carefully.

I give a tight-lipped nod of agreement, unsure what to make of her. Everything about her is secretive and dangerous, and I’m not too keen on getting familiar. I focus my attention outside again, scanning for any sign of trouble. Amanda seems utterly indifferent as she continues to stare me down.

“You’re a quiet one,” she announces, smirking devilishly. “Always gotta watch out for the quiet ones.”

I ignore the comment, watching for Devon to return.

“I bet you broke a lot of hearts in California,” she infers. “Guys like you can’t help it. Some poor girl just wants to get to know you, but something’s locked up that even you don’t have the key for.”

I look at her then, smudged and garish makeup, cleavage bared even at ten below. I wonder if too many men have been honest with her before, showing her the ugliest parts of humanity.

“No one wants to know me,” I finally say, laughing humorlessly.

Amanda studies my face, serious and composed. I can feel the first chemical effects of the pills, the sharp burn in my stomach. Everything is starting to take on that unreal quality. Even if I was inclined to feel something in this moment, my heart is cutoff from my brain.

“You may believe that, but it’s not true.” She leans back into her seat, out of my line of vision. “Don’t fuck yourself up so much you can’t recognize it.”

Motion finally comes from the house across the street. Devon is loping towards the car, collar pulled high against the driving wind.

“Hey, don’t say anything about the pills.” Amanda cautions, lighting another cigarette and staring disaffectedly out the window. “He doesn’t want the bun in the oven getting overcooked.”

 

***

Same routine, different location, except Devon doesn’t trust this one. She’s always asking to meet in open areas too exposed for Devon’s liking. He asked me to drive this time, rationalizing that my car would blend into the background better. His cherry red two-door with the flashy hubcaps is often deemed too conspicuous, and the rest of the Wolverines don’t have a functioning vehicle between them at the moment.

We’re parked in the far lot by the lake, near a narrow port for public boat launch. Nothing about this is discreet, regardless of the vehicle we’re in. There’s no reason to be here midday in the dead of winter.  

“This bitch is shady, man.” Devon is turning all around in the car, hunched in his seat and trying to peak out the windows from different angles. “Why’s she always late? Something ain’t right about her.”

I wonder if the irony is lost on him, or if he realizes that he’s the drug dealer and by very definition the shady one. I puff on the joint we’re sharing and hand it back to him, holding the smoke in my chest for as long as possible before exhaling in one long, opaque veil.

“Why sell to her then?” I ask, only half-interested in the answer.

Devon sucks on the crudely rolled joint, quick and nervous. He makes a gesture, rubbing his thumb and fingers together. “Money talks, Jimbo. And she’s always got plenty to say.”

I lean back in the driver’s seat, looking out over Sky Lake as my head rests heavily on the cushion. The jittering in my hands has stopped, thanks to the weed, but I can’t keep my mind from bouncing all around. Devon is only fueling the unease, jumping and ducking at every passing car.

I try to shut him out and force the tightly wound knot in my head to uncoil. I can actually feel the thoughts in my brain, pathways that are plugged up and threatening to burst. A pointed, sharp pain radiates from somewhere deep in my grey matter. The water is watching me back, frozen and unblinking.

“Big winter waves,” I mutter quietly.

Devon gives me a quick, perplexed look, but before he can say anything a black Mercedes pulls into the lot.

“Hey asshole, look alive – our old lady just rolled in.”

Devon is out of the car in one movement, pulling his beanie down over his ears as he approaches the buyer’s car. It’s nice – well-maintained and expensive. Everyone else is driving around with winter sludge and road salt flung all over their vehicles, but this one looks like it’s just come from the carwash. And the lady driving it looks just as put-together in her tailored suit and perfectly manicured nails. High-functioning. Someone who has a lot to lose.

The exchange is over in a matter of seconds and then the woman is pulling out slowly, careful not to kick up mud in her wake. She doesn’t like to get dirty.

 

***

**_It’s swelteringly hot. Even in the shade it feels like the sun is boiling my skin. Nothing about the day seems unusual, but I feel a deep sense of dread as I go about my work._ **

**_The threshing machine is hitched to the tractor, tilling the coastline as it works to purify the beach. Everyone expects things to look a certain way here, to fit a particular mold. They pay for it. I don’t make the rules, I just follow the script._ **

**_I come to the end of another pass, turning the heavy machinery around for the final strip. My mind is a blank. I can’t remember who I am, what I did last night, or what I have to do after this. The sun beats down on the metal roof over me, and a renewed wave of heat licks across my skin._ **

**_I feel sick. Anxiety churns the pit of my stomach and the sound of the waves crescendos to a constant hiss, like the signal went out on a TV set to full volume. I try to shake it from my ears, letting go of the wheel as the noise rises to a deafening level. All I can think to do is close my eyes._ **

**_The equipment plows forward on its path, independent of me, until it hits a bump in the soil. The wheels sputter and churn, burrowing themselves deep in the sand until they grind to a halt. The engine dies and suddenly everything is quiet… but it isn’t right. I look out at the ocean and see the waves breaking, utterly silent._ **

**_I stumble out from the tractor, losing my footing as the machine is tipped too far to one side. On hands and knees I start to crawl away, but stop as I come around the front._ **

**_Laying there, dead on his side, a boy is encased in the sand around him. His face is turned towards the white-hot sky, a hollow where a blue eye should be._ **

 

***

My thoughts are like smoke. In the mornings, I can’t tell the difference between memories and dreams. After determining a conversation was real, I can’t remember if it occurred in the last week or the last day. The pills make everything feel like one unending, indistinguishable day. They negate my energy and emotion, hijacking them to whatever level they dictate.

But alcohol steals some control back. It hits my blood and enlivens my limbs. The uncoordinated, trembling day becomes a loose and smooth dance. I talk, I laugh, I’m social. The pills make my mother ask, “Where did you go?” But when I drink, we can laugh and pretend nothing has changed.

It started innocently, adjacently. Joshua Tree, a family trip gone sour. Dad left early, taking Medina back home with him while I stayed behind with Mom. Mom was upset, had a beer or two, kept talking. I drank to match her drinks; talked to fill her silences. I wanted to be what she didn’t have – a companion, defender, protector. She was happy to let me try. As long as I was there and on her side, she gave me whatever I wanted.

Medina tried to shift the blame off me for as long as she could, but it was inescapable. Somewhere along the way my motivations changed and my intentions lost purity. Like Devon, always looking for the payoff. Forty bucks here and there, a bottle of liquor, unguarded access to the prescriptions she was supposed to be taking herself. I used Mom as much as she used me.

I see all of these things clearly, falling fitfully in and out of sleep. Every truth, no matter how repulsive, laid bare. Once it’s revealed, the truth becomes a prison. We all think we want honesty, but we’re willing to believe a satisfactory lie.  So we tell ourselves stories. An addict brother becomes a victim of circumstance. A bipolar mother becomes an unregenerate villain. A scared, misfit girl becomes a pillar of resilience and autonomy.

I told Medina I was done with lies. The truth is always on my mind, but that’s where it stays. Unlike my sister, I know better than to write this shit down.


	2. Weather Balloon

_Turns out I’m the one with the sneaky gene._

_I’ve been home from the Palos Verdes hospital just three days, all contemplation of inpatient treatment successfully dodged, though the compromise is therapy. My dad isn’t happy, but he doesn’t want to push the issue. My mother is quick to point out his shortcomings as a parent in contrast to her many virtues. She reminds him who their son chose to be with, and he softens to negotiations._

_Everyone is tip-toeing around me like I’m breakable. My dad calls to ask about me but doesn’t ask to speak to me directly. Mom is suffocating, trying to be so physically and emotionally close that I can barely form a private thought. She watches me constantly, tears threatening to break loose at any moment. Often they do, and she sobs through unspecific apologies as I try to calm her down._

_She tells me she keeps playing it over – that if I had died she wouldn’t be able to take it. Her doctor prescribes her new anxiety medications and she takes them liberally, but discreetly. She hides them in bottles of Tylenol and tells me she has a headache. I watch her eyelids grow heavy and her speech slur._

_School is starting up again and now I won’t even have Medina to buffer my mother’s laser-focus. I hear her getting around one morning and slip out from under my mother’s grasp, where we fell asleep on the couch. I shuffle quietly down the hall, trying not to wake my mother as I approach Medina’s room._

_“Oh God,” she quietly gasps. “I thought you were Mom.”_

_I go inside, closing the door behind me. Mom has allowed my sister the privilege of having privacy again, agreeing to let her put her bedroom door back on its hinges. Except this time a handyman didn’t come. Medina had to do it herself._

_“What’s up?” my sister asks, pausing her morning routine to grant me an audience._

_“I don’t think I can spend the whole day alone with Mom,” I say, looking up at her miserably._

_“So don’t. Go surfing,” she offers. “I wish I could convince Dad to let me take senior year online, too. I’d surf all day and do my homework at night.”_

_I roll my eyes. “You know I can’t do that.”_

_“Why not?” she raises her voice, forgetting herself. We both freeze and listen for any sign of our mother before continuing._

_“Because you don’t want to see the Bayboys?” Medina asks. “Fuck them.”_

_“I haven’t surfed in weeks, Medina.”_

_She’s quiet for a moment, thinking. “Why don’t you just come with me and Adrian to Manhattan Beach? His friends are really cool. They don’t care that we’re from Lunada.”_

_She gently tries to keep arguing her case, but I haven’t stopped shaking my head._

_“I don’t get you,” she says, turning back to riffle through the clothes in her dresser. “You’re so loyal to those guys but don’t want to see them. You refuse to surf anywhere but Lunada, but you won’t even surf there anymore.”_

_I don’t have an explanation to give her._

_So I wait for Medina to get home from school. I want to apologize, offer to do something together. Not surfing, but something just the two of us can do. I think that maybe we’ll go to the movies or walk to the park. But when she finally comes through the front door she’s in a rush, making a beeline for her board._

_“Be back later,” she calls to us from the hall. “Don’t worry about me for dinner.”_

_Hurrying after her, my mom catches a glimpse of Adrian’s Mustang as it backs out of the driveway and speeds off down the street. By eleven that evening, my mother has fallen asleep and Medina still isn’t home. By eleven-thirty I’m at Pratt Point, cash in hand for the bottomfeeders._

_I promised my mother that things would be different, and she convinced my father of the same. But there is one person I can’t lie to, who knows my intentions before I do. Sometimes I wish we could go back. Even though the wall was forming, it wasn’t so insurmountable yet. We could still strain to see each other._

 

***

Mom is working a lot. I hear her in the driveway early, starting the car and scraping off the ice. I try to make myself valuable, shoveling snow and picking up the house. There are no maids to clean up our messes here. I want to be a good son.

Although I’m too late to have it cleared before Mom left for work, I go out later and take my time chipping away at the snow and ice in the driveway. I carve out other paths too, one to the mailbox and the sidewalk leading to our front door. It’s probably too cold for the ice melt to work, but I sprinkle some along the walkways just in case.

The snow is heavy, and it feels good to sense my muscles working beneath the weight. By the time I’m finished, flushed and exhausted, I’ve forgotten that I took more pills. But the way the light traces along my vision when I turn my head reminds me. It seems that when I’m feeling good, I can always feel better.

Now with a clean trail to the mailbox, I go retrieve the last few days’ worth of mail. It’s all junk, most of it come-ons from women’s magazines hounding my mother. One company has even mistakenly addressed their letter to “MR. & MRS. JIM MASON”. I can’t toss it in the trash fast enough, but the others I place on my mother’s dresser for her to leaf through.

Now that I’m inside I start in on the rest of the house. Empty the trash, vacuum and dust, scrub out the toilets, clean up the kitchen – the activity focuses me. My fingers don’t feel like they’re working quite right, because every command sent from brain to body is tested by biochemical impediment. But I like it, working through the obstacle. It almost heightens the effects, with the added bonus of making me feel useful.

The day gets long but I’m still working. At some point I’m crushing pills into precise, fine lines and inhaling them. The bathroom vanity is polished so clean I can almost see my face in the shiny, faux-marble top. I do another rail then go back to my work in the tub. Some particularly stringent cleaner I found under the sink is doing a wonder on the shower walls. I spray a side at a time and wipe it clean, watching as streams of discolored residue drip down the smooth surface, leaving bright lines in their wake.

 I’m proud of my work until I hear Medina’s voice in my head, mocking me: _At least I don’t clean toilets for Mama._

I don’t even notice the time until I hear my mother’s car pull back into the driveway.

I take the last of the lines, franticly hoovering up all traces. The skin on my hands is red, chemically peeled from all the cleaning products. I glance in the mirror trying to convince myself that I look normal. My eyes are half-shut, pupils blown so wide that the blues of my eyes are tiny, pale rings. I’m trembling, sweating, and the color is gone from my lips.

Slapping my face a few times, hard, I watch my complexion in the mirror. Splotchy color floods back into my cheeks, but I’m not sure what to do about the eyes. My mother’s voice is in the dining room now, but she’s not talking to me.

Only one side of the conversation reaches my ears, but I recognize immediately that she’s talking to my sister. My mother is always tired after a shift but she’s trying to sound chipper and fully present. Nothing changed between the two of them after the overdose, except now they both like to pretend that they’re on good terms. It’s playacting, and it’s the same way my mother tried to smooth things over with the doctors and psychologists who had so many questions. She claimed to be blindsided by what happened, oblivious to any troubles at home. We were just one big, happy, high-functioning family. The solution, in her mind, is to pretend there isn’t anything to fix.

“Okay bug,” my mother coos into the receiver. “I’ll talk to you again soon.”

I stagger out of the back bedroom, cleaning products in hand as I walk with a strange, lopsided gait. Tumbling against the kitchen sink, I stoop to put the spray bottles and rags in the cupboard beneath. The counter is the only thing keeping me from falling to the ground as I rest my weight against it.

“Just got off the phone with Medina,” my mom says, peeking her head around the corner. “She says hi.”

“That’s great,” I drone sarcastically, fighting to stuff the cleaners back into their rightful place under the sink.

“She had some downtime between classes so we were catching up. Can you believe it’s seventy degrees there right now? Sun still shining…”

“You got sick of all the sunshine,” I remind her, slamming the cans and bottles around in the cubby hole, hoping to drown her out.

She continues as if I didn’t speak. “I called Medina the other morning, but it completely slipped my mind about the time difference. I told her I could start calling that early every day and she’d never have to worry about being tardy to class.”

When I don’t speak, she views it as an invitation to keep rambling on.

“She misses you. She would’ve called on your birthday but Adrian was taking her out to celebrate. She wasn’t sure when to–”

“Stop it,” I erupt, turning to look her in the eyes.

She’s noticeably stunned, but doesn’t let it deter her. “What, Jim? What’s the problem? Explain it to me.”

She’s looking at me, building courage. I feel heat rising up and cooking my blood. I stand to face her straight on, trying not to sway on unsteady legs.

“Is it because of Adrian?” She exhales slowly, softly tempering her tone. “I know that I said some things when your father and I were first separated. But Adrian isn’t actually your _replacement_ , Jim.”

“You know she fucked him, right?”

Her face crumples in a mixture of disgust and skepticism.

“Oh my God, Jim. Where did you… Did she tell you that?” She scans my expression, trying to gauge whether or not I’m serious.

“No.”

“Well, then,” she waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t be so perverse. I’m gonna fix us something to eat. Have you eaten today? You look pale.”

 

***

_I’m outside Medina’s room in the house on Via Neve. I can hear the rapid clicks of laptop keys firing under her fingers before poking my head in, at which point they promptly stop._

_“What are you writing,” I ask, coming in and flopping down on the bed, uninvited. “More tales of the Morubu tribe?”_

_She glances at me, a brief look of annoyance as she rolls her eyes and closes the computer._

_“No,” she smirks. “Just some homework.”_

_I’m returning her smile, but we both watch each other carefully. Medina is the only person in the world I can read completely. Maybe it’s a twin thing. All I know is that in this moment, I can tell she’s lying._

_There’s a wall of things to say that sits between us. That’s the way it’s felt with everyone lately. Mom, my dad, the doctors and psychiatrists – no matter how difficult or uncomfortable, they feel responsible to start the conversation. The difference with Medina is that we don’t actually need words. The pressure to speak completely evaporates in the silence of our mutual understanding._

_It can be both good and bad to know someone that well. I didn’t press the issue with her then, or in the many similar moments that occurred in the following weeks. She was so reticent, so distracted by whatever she was doing all day and all night hunched over that computer. If she wasn’t at school or surfing, she was shut up in her room with the sound of keys clicking._

_I tried dragging her out, goading her to watch cartoons with me or go swimming in the pool. She would barely acknowledge me, like I wasn’t even there. I should’ve understood then, but I was willfully blind. I didn’t want to lose her._

_I came home from therapy one afternoon, after Mom dropped me off to do some Christmas shopping. I went into the house expecting Medina to be there, but noticed her surfboard was missing from its usual place in the hallway. Mine was still propped against the wall where it had been for months, collecting a grimy layer of dust and carpet fibers in the hardening wax._

_I figured she must’ve gone out, unable to resist the swell of winter waves. Still I went to her bedroom to look for her, hopeful that we could spend the rest of the day together in this rare moment alone. Her window was open and I could hear the sounds of the waves outside. I peered out, catching sight of a few surfers as they bobbed in the churning water. Tiny black figures against the massive whitecaps. My heart surged for a moment, remembering what it felt like to be them._

_I couldn’t watch anymore. I turned away, thoughts now relegated to the white capsules in my bedroom. On my way out I noticed Medina’s computer, idling on the home screen. In the system tray a single document was highlighted. Clicking it, the document came up with the curser icon blinking dutifully where its author left off._

“Just before sunset, the big winter waves reach their peak. I take my brother’s board, swim for a wave, ride it to the shore, and paddle out again. I kiss its nose once and then push it away as hard as I can, watching until an undertow smashes it against the breakwall. It flips high in the air and lands on its belly, shattering into mounds of resin and pale polyurethane foam. I tread water for a while, waiting until Jim’s star comes out, so I can say one last good-bye from the bay. I’ll be surfing in Hawaii soon. After that, Bali, Java, Thailand. I have no itinerary, no plans to return.”

 

***

Freezing rain shuts everything down. Mom wakes me up early with the news that Berringer’s has closed so we can have the whole day together, like old times. The smell of coffee and bacon fills the house, but instead of finding it appetizing, it stings my nose and amplifies the piercing pain behind my eyes.

I stare at the pattern in the comforter draped over me as I lay motionless at the foot of my mother’s bed. I strain to remember the night before, memories soft and out of focus. No day is distinct enough to clearly remember. Yet slowly, weakly, it comes back to me. After eating we played cards in her room and then fell asleep. Like old times. I never try to go to my room anymore. Her wants are my command.

A half hour later I’m sitting at the kitchen island, unenthusiastically prodding at a serving of slimy eggs. My stomach recoils, sick at the thought of having to take even one bite. Mom doesn’t seem to notice, happily munching away and chatting about her plans for the day. She wants to cook a big dinner, something balanced.

“You’re happy here, aren’t you Jimmy?”

Suddenly there’s a knock at the front door. I glance up from my plate, surprised, but my mother hardly misses a beat as she glides to answer it.

“Oh! You really didn’t have to,” she says, sounding surprised but overly congenial as she holds the door open.

I crane my neck around, trying to see who it is. David walks into view, grinning lopsidedly as he kisses my mother’s cheek. He hands off a paper sack, which she plops on the kitchen counter and starts unloading. She pulls out an assortment of groceries, the essentials like bread and milk.

“David didn’t want me driving in these conditions,” she explains. “Isn’t he just the sweetest?”

I don’t know if she honestly expects an answer, but I doubt she’d want to hear mine. It’s as if she spoon feeds him opportunities to become her hero. She didn’t even mention the groceries to me, though she knows I would have gone out to get them.

“It’s nothing,” David replies, ruddy with her compliments. “That’s a perk of living above your own grocery store.”

“But you still risked life and limb to get here!” My mother exaggerates. “Have you seen all the accident reports that have come in this morning?”

I pick up my plate of untouched food and scrape it into the trashcan in one clean sweep. If I had any hope of eating before, it has completely vanished after being in the room with these two. I don’t know who my mother becomes, or is trying to become, when she’s with David. It’s a charade, some television courtship reminiscent of the sappy innocence of a 1950s sitcom.

When the masks come off and my mother shows her true colors, David will run. He’s not a man equipped to handle my mother.

 

***

Medina can tell a story, I’ll give her that. But it’s not altogether true. After finding her story that day, I forwarded a copy to myself. I had to know what else she said about us, the way she saw the story. For better or worse, I found out.

After the sand machine found me on the beach, everything else is a lie. Well, except I really wasn’t the arsonist. But it doesn’t matter whether or not I was, because Medina had already made up her mind about me. The only person she pictured in Australia or Bali or wherever was herself – riding low and effortless on the towering waves, tribe of one. Her firestarter counterpart was cast out, the natural enemy of water. He was banished to a mental hospital and sentenced to die, or else dismissed by two thousand miles. A pariah in a frozen land.

There was no ending, fictional or otherwise, in which my sister was willing to keep me in her life.

 

***

_Neither of us wanted a party, but no one would stop Ava Adare (soon to be the new Mrs. Mason) from flaunting the wealth and prestige her fiancé afforded her. Our graduation from high school was the first major event to celebrate since the engagement party she’d thrown for herself in January. My mother found it doubly ridiculous since open house parties are typically a Midwest tradition, but as soon as Ava caught wind of the idea she was on the phone with caterers and drafting a guest list._

_Ava knew everyone in Palos Verdes, first through her connections as a lowly real estate agent and now as one of the upper echelon. Her status was elevated once she caught the eye of our celebrity-doctor father, then even more so after securing his proposal. Our open house was just another excuse to dazzle their social circle, so it didn’t matter that Medina had no friends or that I had lost touch with all of mine. None of our extended family could make it either, as my mother’s side was too poor to travel that far, and my father’s side was already planning to come for his wedding in two weeks._

_Mom didn’t come either, surprising nobody. My father invited her as a gesture of civility, though Ava refused to waste one of the elaborate RSVP letters on her. Nonetheless, Mom was uncharacteristically polite in her decline, stating she had too much packing to do for our upcoming move. It didn’t work when I tried to use the same excuse on my father, but Mom smiled when I told her about it later._

_In reality, I was surprised that the party was in my honor as well. I knew my father’s distaste for the online program that I used to finish senior year, how inferior he felt it was. I’d heard the protests:_

_“He needs more socialization, Sandy – not less. Keeping him in that house day-in and day-out won’t help. Next thing I know he’ll be wearing a bathrobe twenty-four hours a day.”_

_He took his pride in Medina, who graduated with high honors from the Mentally Gifted Minors program. In the photograph of them at her graduation ceremony, Medina resplendent in cap and gown, his smile looks like it could split his face in two._

_Medina was more agreeable about the party from the start, giving that tight-lipped nod I would come to find her using so often with our father and Ava. She didn’t want to go through the sham any more than I did, but more than that, she didn’t want to be the difficult child. So she pretended to care when selecting the music, decorations and menu with Ava, and agreed to go shopping for a new dress to wear to the party._

_On the actual day of the event, Dad picked Medina and I up from our mother’s house – Medina in her new designer dress and me with my wrinkled shirt and crooked tie. As we pulled up to my father’s new house, I felt a sick sense of nervousness. I had never seen it in person, only in the pages of the Palos Verdes Gazette or from a far distance in the ocean, where the white gazebo in the backyard stood out against the jagged rock. Being here now didn’t make it feel any more like my father’s house. It was still just the place from that magazine, or the speck my sister pointed out from the vantage point of our surfboards._

_I fished inside my suitcoat pocket, making sure the little baggie was still there. When I looked up again, I caught Medina’s eye watching me from the rearview mirror._

_“You ready?” she asked before following my father into the party._

_Ava was flitting around like it was her _debutante ball__ , _schmoozing with her coterie and keeping the help in line. The smile never left her face, even when she pulled aside the caterer to exchange a private word about the lackluster fruit trays._

_The party was set up in the backyard, with most of the crowd of strangers milling around the buffet table or politely listening to the band, champagne flutes filled high. Medina looked lost without Adrian, not yet returned from his first all-star year at college. I couldn’t help but notice the sudden light in Medina’s eye when Ava brought him up, unable to stop gushing about her son._

_“And what about your stepson, Jim,” I heard one of the well-dressed men ask. “Was he able to make it today?”_

_I ducked out of sight quickly, confident I would not be sought out if I made myself scarce. Wandering over to the deserted gazebo, I was stopped on the way by one of the wait staff who handed me a glass of champagne. Downing the drink in just a couple mouthfuls, I watched the water for a while from under the shade of the pavilion. The wind was weak and warm, carrying the scent of the ocean in its trail._

_I forgot myself for a while, happy just to look out in silence. But before too long, I could sense someone watching me. Glancing quickly, trying to be subtle, I looked over and recognized the long, dark hair and piercing eyes of Heather Hunt._

_I hadn’t seen her since we broke up in late summer the year before. She didn’t look any different, except her mouth was pulled into a slight frown as she watched me, contrary to the megawatt smile she used to flash in my direction. I felt instantly self-conscious, aware of the weight I’d lost and the sallowness of my skin. I started to make my way inside then, desperate to escape her view._

_I was annoyed that she even came. Though her mother is one of Ava’s friends, Heather had no ties to me or Medina anymore. It felt like everyone was trying to sneak a look: Jim, the post-OD sideshow. First it was the Bayboys, coming around the house and asking to see me. Then Cami Miller and her gaggle of mean girls, snapping my picture at the Lunada Bay Market. I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was the only reason Heather accepted an invitation to a party for the Mason twins._

_Unfamiliar with my father’s house, I went inside and made my way up the stairs in search of somewhere private. The upper level was a labyrinth of rooms, but thankfully there was no one else in sight. I closed myself inside what appeared to be a guest room, slinking against the far wall as I looked out the window. I stayed down low, not wanting anyone to see me from the party below. I didn’t even hear her coming up the stairs._

 

***

I hear my mom giggling. The sound reaches me from behind my bedroom door, above the music thumping through my stereo. David lowers his voice when he talks to her, but hers goes girlish and high-pitched. She laughs at everything he says. I refuse to stay in the house with them all day.

Thankfully Devon is always available. He tells me he’ll come by once he finishes a few things. He likes to make his dealings sound high stakes and dangerous, but the majority of transactions take place behind the local Burger King with zit-faced teenagers looking to score for some weekend mischief. It’s the distributors, like Tyler, who are the real gangsters. Devon’s just a grubby pusher.

I turn the music up in my speakers, successfully drowning out my mom and David for the time I still have to suffer them. My bedroom looks like a storage closet. Moving boxes are strewn everywhere, some opened and rifled through but most are still sealed, sitting exactly where I placed them after moving here six months ago. My new mattress lays at an odd angle in the middle of the floor – the receptacle for a mixed pile of clean and dirty clothes. 

I stand at my dresser, a large, boxy construction with an affixed mirror. The previous owner of the house just left it here, probably intimidated at the thought of attempting to move it. It’s scarred and scuffed up enough as it is, but I don’t mind. All of the drawers are empty except for one. I reach in and pull out my kit – a little mirrored plate and razorblade.

I don’t have to worry about hiding it. My mother doesn’t come in here; I barely come in here. Besides, she stopped spying on me after the move. Once she had me to herself.

Time passes in massive waves. I can’t tell exactly how much time, because I can convince myself that it’s either long or short. Time is subject to my feeling. I’m staring into the dresser mirror, shirtless, arms hanging limply at my sides. Eyes open too wide, skin clammy. On some level I’m aware of how crazy I must look, but I can’t bring myself to snap out of it until the door flies open.

Devon stares at me, frowning. I’m slow to react, barely moving my head to look at him. I stand there like a zombie, swaying on uncertain feet. Yeah, I look crazy.

“Check your phone, man.” Devon says, his expression a mixture of amusement and confusion. “I’ve been calling you.”

I shuffle over to the mattress, halfheartedly digging through the mountain of clothes to find my cellphone. I give up after a minute, slowly dripping down onto the mattress to sit. I hold my face in my hands, wiping at my eyes repeatedly. Devon’s attention drifts toward the dresser, sprinkled with capsules pulled apart like vacated chrysalides.

“You good?” Devon asks, dubious.

I nod.

“Well get dressed. I’ll be in the car.”

There is only a mild confrontation when I try to leave. Mom is overly cautious about the weather, and suspicious of Devon. Although she likes to tell my dad that I’m making great progress and reconnecting with childhood friends, she knows Devon isn’t as wholesome as all that.

I finally get out to Devon’s car, fighting against the driving wind and blizzard-like conditions. I shake the snow from my hair as I fall into the passenger’s seat, and Devon is peeling out almost before I can close the door.

“We’re gonna be late,” he sighs, annoyed, pulling a cigarette from his pack. The car drifts unnervingly over the center line as his attention shifts to light it.

“Late?” I ask. “I thought you did all the drop-offs.”

“Not a delivery, man – did you really not see any of my messages?”

I stay quiet, not wanting to state the obvious.

“We’re taking Amanda and her friend out. Amanda wants to see that biopic.”

Anxiety floods my system. I was barely prepared to leave the house, let alone to go on a surprise double-date. I start to protest.

“Can’t you just drop me at your place? I’ll just hang there ‘til you guys get back.”

“Too late, bro. Amanda wants you to meet this girl. Besides you owe me now,” he says, giving me the side-eye. “Your crazy-ass Mom interrogated me for fifteen minutes before letting me in the house. I about froze my nuts off.”

I’m only half-listening, distracted and dreading the evening ahead of us.

“Can I have one of those?” I ask, looking at Devon’s cigarette.

“Sure, man. I’ve got something else too, if you’re looking to buy.”

“What is it?”

He smiles wide, lips pulling back to reveal the decay on his eye tooth. “I think you’ll like it.”

 

***

We meet the girls at the theater with just enough time to get tickets and find our seats before the opening credits are through. As Devon buys tickets for the group, Amanda briefly introduces me to her friend, Nikki. She’s tiny, shorter than Amanda by several inches and super slim. Her dark eyes and caramel hair match her deep complexion, but her smile is bright white when she looks at me.

Devon’s new pills are hitting me harder than I expected, mixing badly with what I had already taken. My thoughts are racing and I’m self-conscious, embarrassed by my tired eyes and dirty coat. I like to think that I would have tried harder to be presentable if I knew we were going out. But Nikki doesn’t seem to notice because she keeps smiling up at me and snapping her gum. Her lips are painted a deep red.

We head down the dimly lit hall towards our theater. I reach the door first, holding it open for our group. Devon and Nikki go in first, but as Amanda enters she seeks out my eyes.

“Get out of your head,” she whispers, slipping past me into the dark room.

Everything trails slowly in my eyes. I blindly follow her fractured form. 

We scope out a spot, huddled against the far wall where there are only four seats to a row. I slide in first and Nikki follows, but Amanda grabs Devon’s hand and drags him down a few rows ahead. In the darkness I think I catch Devon wink at me.

The show starts soon after we get settled and I’m mercifully spared from making small talk. I feel awkward still, even with the movie filling the silence. I’m not sure what to do with my arms, trying to leave the armrest between us open for her. I fold in on myself, crossing one arm over my middle and using the other to prop up my chin. I’m still too whacked out on pills for anything to feel normal, much less figuring out personal space with a stranger in a dark room.  

Nikki is much more comfortable. Within the first few minutes of the movie, she pushes the armrest into an upright position so there is no obstruction between us. She does the move with confidence, seamlessly pulling my arm around her and angling her back against my chest. At this angle, there is no way she is focusing on the screen.

My arm is at her disposal now, draped lightly over her chest. I keep my fingers curled in, not wanting to touch her but she teases my hand open. Tickling my palm with her acrylic nails, she drags them down to my fingertips in one slow, measured move. Before I know it she’s guiding one of my fingers into her mouth, sucking on it as her free hand creeps up my thigh.

For as much as she’s trying to draw me in, my mind isn’t here. I don’t know anything about Nikki, not her last name or age or whether or not she has any brothers or sisters. I don’t know what music she likes or if we’d have anything in common. What I do know is that it wouldn’t matter if I had all the answers to those questions.

I knew all the trivialities about Heather and she knew mine. It didn’t change anything, and I was with Heather at my best. I can’t even muster the pretense of interest in this girl. If she knew even the most basic, surface details about me, she would run screaming. All it would take is one look at me sleeping at the foot of my mother’s bed.

Even in a family of freaks, I’m the freakiest. Medina knew. She never said it out loud, but it was disguised in softer words. _Momma’s boy_.

The longer this girl writhes against me the more clearly I realize that she isn’t the problem. Neither was Heather. I will never be what any of them want, because I’m not even here. It’s like Amanda said – there’s a key I can’t find.

“Let me up,” I say, gently pushing Nikki back into her seat as I stand.

“What the hell,” she says, none too quietly.

When I walk by, her glare follows me up the aisle until I disappear out the doors. I quickly duck into the restroom, glancing around to make sure I’m alone. At the sink I fill my palm with water and wash down another tablet. My hands are shaking so badly that the water splashes all down my chin. Wiping off in the mirror, I see the same too-wide eyes that looked back at me in my bedroom mirror. Pupils blacker than deep space. Red lipstick marking my neck like contusions.

In the lobby I find an unoccupied bench and fall asleep, waking only when Devon kicks my shins. Even the poorly lit hall is too bright for me and I squint against the light, blinking into semi-consciousness. I see Amanda standing far off with Nikki, and I wave stupidly. Amanda ignores me, turning toward her friend who is standing with her arms crossed, lips moving a mile a minute. They head outside.  

“C’mon, Fucko,” Devon says. “Jesus how high are you?”

Back in the car, he has more questions. He lights a cigarette and offers one to me automatically.

“So you don’t like Latinas?” he speculates.

 I sniff, a feeble attempt at laughter. “No, Nikki was fine.”

“Yeah, she’s definitely _fine_ ,” Devon emphasizes. “But that’s about all she’s got going for her. She’s a crazy bitch if you piss her off. You’re lucky you escaped fully intact.”

I tell him I’ll remember to thank my lucky stars.

“You should come hang at Jay’s tonight. Nikki might come though…”

“That’s alright,” I assure him. “I don’t want to push my luck any more tonight.”

“Suit yourself. I gotta go keep tabs on Amanda,” he says, taking a deep drag. “Bitch doesn’t know when to slow down.”

I stay quiet, remembering the pills the other day. I wonder what else Amanda does that he doesn’t know about.

“She’s knocked up,” Devon suddenly blurts out. “Don’t know if she told you.”

“Yeah, she sort of mentioned it,” I stutter.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do. She wants to keep it.”

He’s driving fast, speeding down the highway. This stretch through the countryside is pitch black, surrounded on all sides by trees. It’s still snowing, and in the harsh glow of the headlights it looks like we’re traveling at lightspeed through a galaxy of stars.

“Tyler’s going to kill me. No fucking joke.”

 

***

_The engagement is a sensitive subject. Mom doesn’t take it well when she finds out, accusing us of trying to keep secrets from her. Me and Medina wanted to keep it under wraps until after the holidays, but people talk in P.V. It was naïve of us to think this town of gossips could keep anything to themselves. They probably talked louder when they saw her coming._

_It doesn’t get any easier when it’s announced in the local paper, or when the invitations to the extravagant engagement party are sent out. It’s not long after that the first talks of moving come up._

_Her eyes are wild and she’s speaking very loudly, practically shouting. “We could really do it, Jimmy. We could just pack up and go – simple as that!”_

_Mom is pacing the floor, the belt of her dirty bathrobe dragging across the floor. It doesn’t hold the sides of her robe together anymore, straining across her middle, so she lets it hang open over her pajamas._

_“What about Medina?” I ask, trying to gauge how serious she is._

_She throws up her hands, laughing genially. “Of course, don’t be silly!” She shakes an antidepressant from the Tylenol bottle in her purse. “A new life for everyone.”_

_I listen as she lists all the places we could go, and their various merits and flaws. We’ve done this before. But when she’s still talking about it weeks later, getting more specific about all the logistics, I realize that this time it’s different._

_Reluctantly, my mother agrees to wait until after graduation, but we start packing and uprooting our lives from California one checklist item at a time. I know that the last shred of attachment to this place has vanished when the ice plant is neglected to fry in a dearth of rain._

_“In Michigan, I’ll grow peonies,” my mother says._

_As time presses on, my mother and I live more and more out of the boxes we’ve packed. We eat off of paper products and note how the emptied rooms seem to echo. It doesn’t even smell like our home anymore. Everything about an abandoned house feels different, but there is one room that hasn’t changed at all._

_About a month before our scheduled move, my mother sends me into Medina’s room with a stack of empty boxes and instructions not to come out until everything was packed away._

_“Your sister’s too good to lift a finger to help us,” Mom huffs, angrily shoving the boxes in my arms._

_“She has exams,” I point out, trying to talk her down._

_“Big deal – so did you.”_

_“Mom, you know it’s different.”_

_I watch the color rise up from her neck. Now she’s livid._

_“Don’t you say that,” she shouts, a warning finger in my face. “I don’t want to hear that from you. Your diploma is every bit as legitimate as your sister’s.”_

_She reaches out to grab my face, locking my eyes with hers._

_“Your father wants to make us feel stupid, Jim. I won’t take that. I won’t.”_

_I tear away from her hold, turning down the hallway toward Medina’s room. My mother lets me go, though for once I wish she’d pick a fight. But the person I really want to confront isn’t here._

_School is an excuse. Since finding her story, I can’t help feeling that something isn’t right with my sister. When I first told her where Mom was thinking of moving to, Medina seemed open to it. She even researched surfing Lake Michigan, telling me how people still surf even in the winter._

_Yet here her room sits, unchanged._

_I start in on the easy stuff – clothes stuffed in bottom drawers and shoved to the back of the closet. Knickknacks that litter the dresser and shelves of dusty books. When I’ve boxed up all I can confidently deem nonessential, I move on to the contents of her desk. I find a few items there, old notebooks and a photo album. I pick up an armload and move to set them in one of the boxes, but a layer of papers slides out from my grip._

_It’s mostly old school papers, ones with A pluses and exclamation points scrawled over the front in red ink. I see the one about the Morubu tribe for Mr. Odell’s class, the one she was so excited to tell me about. As I bend to pick up the mess, I find a letter amid the scattered papers._

_It’s from the college Adrian goes to – the familiar insignia catching my eye. I read one key word,_ Congratulations _, followed by the exclamation points that come after so many of her efforts._

_I carefully tuck the stack of papers back in the desk and leave the room._

_After finding the acceptance letter, I don’t join my mother’s inquiries into why Medina isn’t packing, and I no longer believe the excuses my sister gives her. At our open house, I find a quiet corner in one of the bedrooms upstairs and slip inside._

_The pills are bitter, burning my nasal cavity as the acidic compounds drip down the back of my throat. I ready myself for another line, crouched by the windowsill as I look down at the partygoers in their expensive clothes. Everything looks tinny and too-bright, moving unevenly through time._

_“Jim?” I hear somebody call my name. “They want us to open gifts now.”_

_Adrenaline pumps straight to my heart as I realize too late that I’m caught. The door is creeping open before I have a chance to stand, though I’m not sure I have the strength to rise anyway. All I can do is watch, eyes blown black and wide._

_Nothing between us now, my sister stares at me from the doorway. Apart from the trembling of her hands, neither of us moves._

_“Are you kidding me?” she asks. A glint in her eye grows until I see a fat tear break free._

_She blinks and it falls to the ground. I swear I can hear it hit the carpet in the silence._

_I stay quiet, unmoving, unthinking. I don’t raise any protest when she comes into the room, or when she picks up my discarded jacket from the bed. My eyes are still trained on the doorway, not daring to shift even as she reaches into the inner pocket of the coat and pulls out the baggie, which still contains a number of pills. She goes into the adjoining bathroom and I finally close my eyes as I hear the toilet flush, not opening them again until the sound of her footsteps are long down the hall._

 

***

The house is dark when Devon drops me off. I fumble with my keys at the front, waiting for my eyes to adjust in the dark once Devon pulls away. They soon do, and the snow does its job of turning everything an illuminating blue-white. I pop open the door – trying to be quiet though it creaks in the cold – and step inside.

Food scents linger heavy in the air. I’m not sure what my mom fixed herself and David for dinner but it’s as cloying as their flirting. Vaguely, and in spite of the unappetizing food smell, I realize that I’m hungry. Nothing sounds good except cereal. I go to the pantry and retrieve a box, eating dry handfuls as I stand in the kitchen.

I can’t remember the last time I really ate anything, but after a few minutes I remember why it’s so hard. Everything tastes metallic and the texture is all wrong. I start to overthink my breathing, and how to coordinate chewing and swallowing. My mouth is so dry that it’s difficult to actually swallow anything. For a second I sputter, gagging before running to the sink to spit the food out.

“Jimmy?” I hear my mother shuffle up behind me. “Are you alright?”

I cough, clearing my windpipe and rinsing the final remnants down the drain. “Yeah, Mom.”

She watches me for a moment, concern etched onto her features. She looks red-cheeked and nervous.

“You’re back early,” she says. “I thought you’d be out longer on your date.”

“It wasn’t a _date_ ,” I mumble, already irritated.

“That’s what your friend said. He said you were taking some girls out.”

She steps closer, squinting. “What’s that on your neck?”

“We just saw a movie, alright?” I snap at her. “His girlfriend brought her friend. That’s all.”

I wait, steeling myself for the inevitable fight, but I’m caught off guard when she deflects.

“Alright. I just wanted to see how it went,” she smiles warily, like talking down a feral animal. “I hope you had a good time.”

I don’t know how to react, so in lieu of speaking I walk around her towards the bathroom to get ready for bed. I take a shower as hot as I can stand, trying to rinse the smell of Nikki’s perfume from my body. It’s so sweet it burns.

By the time I emerge I’ve calmed down. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of red wine from the bottle I find in the fridge. My mother usually doesn’t drink, but I guess tonight she felt like indulging. I drink the first glass in a single swallow, pouring another. The tremor in my hands starts to subside when the alcohol hits my belly, and I feel like I could sleep again.

Lazily I tread down the hall towards my mother’s room. The door opens before I reach it, my mother leaning against the frame, blocking my path.

She whispers, barely audible. “Why don’t you sleep in your bedroom tonight, huh?”

She gives me a small smile. For a moment I think she’s kidding, but then I notice how imploring her eyes are. She kisses the corner of my mouth quickly.

“Have a good night, sweetie.” The door shuts almost immediately and the distinct click of the lock follows.

My mind flashes to all the nights I stayed up with her, school night or not, playing card games and watching TV for hours while she talked and cried. Ignoring all my friends, I let her vent about Dad and listened to endless plots for revenge and the lectures she would bathe me in, as if I hadn’t proven my loyalty. She would beg me not to leave her, plead with me not to turn on her like my no-good father and my traitorous sister. I promised her I never would. I should have made her vow the same.

I need something stronger. I pull down a bottle from the high cupboard in the kitchen, not bothering with a glass but taking the whole thing to my room. It’s only on second glance that I notice David’s shoes, still sitting by the door where he removed them this morning. Glancing out the window I see his car parked on the side street where it was all day. Suddenly everything aligns.

I should be happy to be left alone. It’s all I wanted in P.V., even just one night of freedom. One night she didn’t need me so desperately. Now who needs who?


	3. Funnel Cloud

**_I’m lying on the beach at dawn. This is the best time to come to watch the waves alone. I watch the water all morning, until the sky turns a murky purple to orange, pink, then yellow neon. I don’t dare blink – I don’t want to miss one shade of this transformation._ **

**_In the far distance I think I see the fin of a whale, and it reminds me of the first time I looked out at Lunada Bay. But as the tiny figure dips and dives, coming in closer to the shore, I see it’s not a whale at all. The nose of a surfboard cuts up on a wave, the rider commanding it with ease. She moves like everything is a part of her – the water, the board, the wind – and I realize that it can only be my sister._ **

**_She rides a swell up to the beach, like the ocean delivered her to me. I smile my best, widest smile when she comes near, but it’s not returned. Hovering above me, tiny droplets of water fall from her long blonde hair, hitting the sand like little atom bombs._ **

**_I’m still smiling, but some of the light has gone out of my eyes. My sister just stares down at me unmoving. I want to speak but as soon as I start to, she walks away, dragging her board behind her._ **

**_“Medina!” I finally manage, screaming her name over and over again. “Medina, come back!”_ **

**_Her footsteps slow then, and she pauses for a brief moment._ **

**_“I don’t want to see,” she calls over her shoulder._ **

**_I want to ask what she means but a shadow is quickly approaching. A large machine barreling down the beach, headed straight for me. There’s no time to react before beveled iron arms sink into my skin, separating flesh from bone. I want to scream but something even more surprising happens: I feel no pain at all._ **

**_The machine halts with its claws inside me. When the lever raises I slide off the lift, feeling the friction of ribs as they grind against metal. Black blood leaks slowly from the puncture wound, too viscous for the sand to absorb. I lay in the gore as the pool around me grows. I’m waiting for the pain to make itself known, but it never comes. Instead I sense a terrible cold, so pervasive it takes a while to notice. I wonder how long I’ve felt this way, or if it counts as a feeling at all._ **

**_From high on the cliffs I see my sister again, making her way up the grassy trail towards the white gazebo._ **

 

***

There’s no space in my bed for me. Moving the laundry proved too daunting a task so I find myself on the floor, entering another day on the heels of an unremembered night. I reel, trying to find my bearings, answer the important questions: Where am I? Why am I here? What conversations did I have last night?

It’s disconcerting to begin every day this way, but I haven’t discovered how to skip this part. It’s necessary fallout. None of the answers matter to me right now anyway – the only thing in my head is the dream.

I don’t remember the beach that morning. At least, I don’t think I do. There are pictures in my head, but I can’t siphon them out from the stories other people have told me. Medina’s version gave the clearest visual, which I can’t help but credit my dreams to. Funny how, in her retelling, I was the one running away.

Other things are all too clear about that night, the last night. Although we stayed in that house for almost a year after, nothing was ever the same. I think a lot about how things might’ve changed, or more likely how they wouldn’t, if that night never happened. I wonder if I had kept the diamond, pawned it like my mother wanted, if she would’ve felt her revenge complete. Maybe then she could’ve let go a little, let us all breathe again.

Wishful thinking. She would’ve blown the money on new curtains and lamps and hassled Medina for not being enthusiastic. Then late one night she’d come talk to me, bravado of the day worn off, and tell me how she still felt empty inside. And I would forgive her.

I think about the fire – how I wanted it to burn up our things and all of my mother’s lies along with it. The letter my dad never wrote, and the phone calls he tried to make. I wanted to out-suffocate my mother, to strip her of her only security.

She was worried I was pulling away. That’s what she told me in the hospital, after Medina and my dad and the nurses and doctors had left us alone. It’s why she’d given me the diamond, an emblem of trust, months after we’d pried it from her wedding band.

“Why did you lie to me?” I asked, staring up at her from the hospital bed.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she cried, unable to look at me. “I just wanted to keep you close.”

The fire and overdose were just consequences. More necessary fallout. The real catalyst for change was the exposure of the truth, but the damage was already done.

Forty-eight hours after I woke up in the hospital, Dad rejoined his overseas conference. A day after that, Medina returned to school and it was just me and Mom again. All of her words and all of her tears.

 

***

While David and my mother are out of the house, I use the opportunity to get some cleaning done. I’m filled with too much nervous energy – bad flashes from the night before. The new pills were unkind, and today my mind is playing tricks on me. I keep thinking I hear my mother, calling my name over the hum of the vacuum cleaner.

I turn the machine off and on again. After the third time, I swear I can hear laughter. Angrily I unplug it from the wall.

“If that’s you, it’s not funny!” I yell.

The empty house sits still. In the silence I hear the rush of blood in my ears like static on a blank station. A prickling sensation erupts over my skin. My heart beats rapidly and I’m sweating, panting. I lay down on the carpet next to the vacuum and plug it back in, desperately praying for it to drown out the sound of my own body. I focus on the drone and my heartrate normalizes, breathing slows. I fall asleep.

I don’t hear when Mom and David pull into the driveway, or when they come through the front door. I only stir when the vacuum is abruptly switched off and the room radiates silence again.

“Jim?” Mom stares down at me, shopping bags still in hand. “What’s going on?”

I stare up at my mother and David, not sure how I can explain falling asleep in the middle of house chores.

“What’s that smell?” My mother is asking.

“I think the belt burned up,” David answers, turning over the vacuum. “Don’t worry, I know how to replace it.”

He smiles reassuringly at my mother but she only looks back at me, worry lines set deep.

 

***

_“You’re the good one.” Mom whispers to me within Medina’s earshot. “Thank God there’s a good one.”_

_She chastises my sister’s ways. Sneaking out of the house to go meet up with boys, staying out all hours of the night. She locks her out of the house, forcing her to sleep in the garden or crawl through my window. She wakes Medina up at midnight to tell her what a vile child she is; what a bad influence she’s become. She makes me stand outside the door to listen._

_Mom keeps me close but she’s always watching Medina. If she picks at a meal, Mom is quick to pick her apart. One morning, Mom makes a stack of French toast and serves it to us lathered in syrup and powdered sugar. Medina politely refuses, reaching for a banana instead._

_“C’mere,” my mother commands. “I have something I want to show you. You too, Jim.”_

_She leads us into her bedroom where she pulls a tape measure from her bureau. She makes a loop, holding it out in front of Medina’s face._

_“Twenty-four inches,” she says._

_Medina sighs, crossing her arms as she stares back dead faced. I shrink against the doorframe, knowing too well where this is going._

_“I used to think I ruled the world, sweetie. Modeling contract and my little waist.” She drops the measuring tape, letting it fall to the floor in a tangle. “Beauty fades, Medina. It doesn’t mean shit.”_

_Medina rolls her eyes._

_“Don’t believe me?” our mother challenges, eyes wild._

_“Mom, let’s just finish breakfast,” I try helplessly._

_“Why don’t you do a little experiment,” Mom continues, ignoring me. “Gain a few pounds. Then let me know if the boys you’re seeing still want you in their backseat.”_

_The quickest way to end this is by staying silent, which Medina is having an increasingly harder time doing. It wasn’t long ago that Mom was on her constantly about her weight, encouraging her to always be mindful of it, to not lose control. Mom was still thin then, and still with my father._

_But Medina is in control and choosing silence. After Mom shoos us out of her room, we return to the kitchen to clean up our plates and unfinished meals. No one has an appetite now._

_“She just wants you to be safe,” I offer, low and hushed._

_“Is that what you really think?” Medina asks pointedly, eyes burning. Nothing in her tone suggests she wants me to actually answer._

_“Is that why it’s so easy for me to sneak out, when she watches you like a hawk? Why she locks the doors and never asks where I was at or who I was with?”_

_I keep my head down, clearing the dishes._

_“What she wants is for me to be as miserable as she is, whether she’s stick-thin and starving or as big as a whale. She’s too pathetic to see that Dad didn’t leave her because of her body, he left her because she’s fucking crazy.”_

_“Shut up!” I scream, surprising us both. “She just doesn’t want a slut for a daughter.”_

_The word sucks the air out of the room. The moment I say it I’m filled with regret, watching as my sister flinches. I panic, feeling the wall between us grow higher. It’s impossible to take it back but I try anyway, stuttering redactions._

_“Stop,” Medina backs away, putting as much distance between us as possible. “I already know what you think of me. I’ve known for a long time.”_

_So many things had started to come between us, but they were little betrayals. Secrecy and segregation. Medina had her private world, and my mother and I had ours. But the guys stealing Medina’s time and affection up to this point had been fleeting. That stopped being true after she met Adrian._

_There was a time when Medina could read my mind and I could read hers. When she could confidently tell Adrian that we were closer than anyone else and always would be. Though the connection has weakened, I don’t have to guess what she’s thinking now. I’ve read the ending. I know who sits with her on the beach at night in heartfelt conversation as she mourns her late family._

_In a world of her own creation, Dad and Ava don’t last, and she and Adrian can make jokes about incest without any real impropriety. The truth must be hard for her to swallow: Dad not only stayed with Ava, he married her. Any future Medina imagined with Adrian is stunted, because Ava would never allow the scandal. Never mind they aren’t blood relatives, and never lived under the same roof. It’s the appearance of it all. My sister chose to live in their world, where all choices are subject to public scrutiny._

_I wanted to keep her with me, safe from all those plastic people and their prying eyes. From the women who whispered about our mother and lusted after our father’s wealth. But fire and water don’t mix, and our mother is the wind that fans the flame and churns the sea._

_I couldn’t hold us all together._

 

***

I’m nodding on the couch, blankly watching the colors and shapes on the TV as they blur in front of my heavy eyes. I shouldn’t have mixed the yellow and the white ones. They have conflicting goals: one is trying to imbue me with energy, the other is trying to suppress every inclination. I’m left inert.

My head lolls to the side, and I’m suddenly aware that my mother is standing in the entryway to the living room, staring. I try to sit up, opening my eyes too-wide.

“There’s someone here to see you,” she intones, arms crossed. “You don’t look well. I’ll tell her to come back.”

“No, Mom,” I sit up fully now. “It’s okay. Who is it?”

“She didn’t tell me her name. Just said she was your date.”

A chill runs through me. Nikki wouldn’t be that insane, to show up at my doorstep… Would she? Before I can protest, Mom is already making her way to the front door to let her in. I hear a stranger’s laugh a minute later, coming closer down the hall. Her voice is husky but soft. I sigh with relief when I realize who it is.

“Amanda,” I say, greeting her as she comes into view.

“Hey Romeo,” she laughs, making her way over to sit next to me on the couch.

Amanda is immediately comfortable in whatever situation she’s in, making herself at home as she curls under the blanket with me despite the glares from my mother.

“Or should I call you Don Juan? The great seducer of women…”

Mom flushes deeply, looking wounded for a second before her jaw sets in stony anger. She makes herself scarce after that, retreating to her bedroom.

“Oops,” Amanda giggles, looking falsely sheepish. “Is Mommy protective of baby boy’s purity? You have been with a woman, haven’t you?”

I glance toward the hallway to make sure my mother isn’t spying on us. Amanda stretches languidly, arms behind her head as she looks at me. I notice her stomach then, the telltale bump that’s beginning to form.

“Did you need something?” I ask her.

“Oh sure, change the subject,” she smirks. “Don’t worry about Nikki, by the way. She was just upset you didn’t think she was hot.”

I realize that I’m grinding my teeth. I reach for the bottle of water sitting next to me, attempting to distract myself. This whole exchange is putting me on edge, and I still don’t know what Amanda wants. I can’t control the shaking in my hand as I bring the bottle to my lips. She notices.

“You got anything left?” Her voice is low and serious, all the joviality of before vanquished. Now we’re really talking.

I stare at her black-rimmed eyes and smudged lipstick. She’s wearing the clothes she had on last night, watching me with bated breath.

I stammer for a minute, not wanting to answer. The problem isn’t sharing – I just can’t keep my eyes away from her belly. She notices my attention drift downward and sits back up to conceal her middle.

“You’re a nice guy, Jim. If you really want me to get up and leave right now, I will. But just know that I have other ways to get what I need, from other guys who aren’t so nice.”

She’s coercing me, that much is obvious. But she’s not saying it as a threat. There’s something wholly resigned in her, speaking the ugly truth for exactly what it is.

“Is it in your room?” she asks.

I nod. Amanda is up in a flash, making her way down the hall. She moves deftly, her tiny frame not making a sound as she moves through the house. I close my eyes, feeling sick to my stomach. Before long she’s back in the living room, but this time she doesn’t join me on the couch. She’s standing at the entryway, deed done, ready to leave. She departs with a final word.

“I know I can be fucked up. But I swear I’m gonna straighten out,” she’s nodding rapidly, her big brown eyes welling with tears, piercing in their intensity. “I could never do it for myself, but I know I will for this baby. I know I will.”

She shows herself out, and at the sound of the front door my mother reemerges from the back of the house. She comes rushing into the living room like she expected me to be gone, then stops dead in her tracks when she sees I’m still there. Her breathing is quick and panicked but she tries to shove it down, composing herself.

“Jim,” she exhales, winded. “I’ll make us some lunch. You need to eat something.”

I nod, unable to protest. She’s relieved that I didn’t resist her, but she still hesitates. Lingering in the entryway, she wrings her hands nervously.

“I’ve been trying to find a good time to tell you, but I guess now is as good as any…”

She has my rapt attention, but won’t meet my eyes.

“Medina’s coming for Christmas.”

 

***

_We haven’t talked since the open house. Medina is almost invisible, avoiding me as much as Mom now. Most of the time she’s just a speck out on the water, but there are long disappearances some weekends, almost always precipitated by the appearance of that black Mustang in the driveway. I can’t help but imagine the conversations they have, all their plans for collegiate life. They went to Sacramento last weekend. Probably to look at apartments and tour the campus. Or maybe she already knows it well._

_Mom is still oblivious, hounding Medina to finish packing up her things. We move in one week, and Medina still hasn’t found the courage to tell us what I already know – she isn’t coming with us._

_Although we’re outdoors on this opulent veranda, it feels like we’re cramped together in a room with no doors or windows. We’re all here: Dad, Ava, Medina, Adrian and me. Even if the wedding planner, photographer and vineyard owners, ancillary friends and family weren’t here, it would only take the five of us to make this space feel crowded._

_Medina is dodging me at all costs. She positions Adrian between our sightlines, keeping him engaged in constant conversation. I’m sweltering in my seat, pulling at the collar of my dress shirt. All I can think about is Mom back at home, falling apart. She kept me up so late last night, dreading the coming few days. My father’s happiness immobilizes her. Through tears she told me, in a disbelieving tone, that it was really over between them. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that she hoped they might some day end up back together. She’s played out her hate, her sense of moral superiority, but last night there was only a profound sense of loss. She can never make him feel for her again._

_These upholstered chairs are a deep maroon shade. I wonder whose brilliant design that was, foreseeing the many tipsy housewives who would swirl an errant splash of red wine while laughing too exuberantly at the nearest bachelor’s quips. I’m sitting in my own corner, trying to avoid the many glances my father keeps throwing me. This morning I drank a couple of leftover beers from the case Mom bought us, and when dad picked me and Medina up for the rehearsal I think he smelled it on my breath. I hate feeling paranoid. I just want to go home._

_When the clergyman, wedding planner and Ava huddle up for a private meeting, I notice Medina and Adrian sneak off the patio and head around the other side of the building. I watch the corner for a while, waiting to see any trace of where they’re heading._

_“Hey Jim.”_

_I practically jump out of my seat at the unexpected voice. I turn to see my dad lingering at a not quite conversational distance, as if he were hesitant to approach._

_“Got a minute?”_

_“Sure,” I nod._

_“You know it’s not too late to be my Best Man. That way Medina won’t stick out so much as groomswoman – you know she hates the attention,” he laughs cautiously, trying to lighten the mood. “There’s this great tux rental place in Del Amo–”_

_“Isn’t it enough that I’m here?” I ask._

_He flinches a little, clearly not expecting to be rejected yet again. It stings but doesn’t deter him._

_“I know you haven’t been too thrilled with me lately. But please, son, for your old man’s sake? Your mom won’t even be here.”_

_“You think that matters?” I fire back, blood boiling. “What happens when she picks up a copy of the fucking_ Palos Verdes Gazette _and sees the pictures?”_

_The photographer notices my father and I in our sequestered location. When she catches my dad’s eye from across the veranda and starts to approach, Dad waves her off. She must not know enough about body language to recognize that this is not a good time. No one wants these moments memorialized._

 

***

“Do you feel like you can talk to me Jimmy?”

We’re in Mom’s bed, cards from an abandoned game of Go Fish strewn all around. One of the sharp edges is poking into my side but I’m too tired to dislodge it.

“Yeah,” I try sounding upbeat, but my voice cracks. I can’t muster the energy to be convincing.

She’s quiet, playing with my hair. I’m hopeful that it was a satisfactory, albeit terse, answer. Her fingers comb through unkempt locks, sending a tickling sensation through me. I remember how Medina used to do the same thing, playing with my hair when we’d watch Saturday cartoons together. When we got older Mom told her to stop, saying she shouldn’t treat me like a baby.  

I’m just barely conscious and the room is spinning. I close my eyes, lost in eupathy.

“Jim?” my mom asks. “Jimmy?”

“I’m awake, Mom,” I say tonelessly, words all garbled together.

“I’m just worried about you.”

All of a sudden she’s crying – big, racking sobs. I’m wide awake now, asking what’s wrong. She tries to answer but can’t form the words. I let her have it out, watching carefully.

“You’re so sleepy all the time and you never eat anything,” she chokes. “It’s like it was before – the lights are on, but no one’s home.”

The tears start afresh and I stay quiet.

“Maybe we should try therapy again, huh?” she says, sniffling. “It might be nice for you to talk to someone else. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Jim. I don’t see how I could let myself live.”

Immediately Medina’s story snaps to the forefront of my mind; her fictitious account of our mother’s death. Hearing our mother talk like this makes it all too plausible. I’m furious that Medina would even be half right about what our mother would do.

“It’s okay, Mom – I’m alright,” I sit up, taking her trembling hand in mine. “I’m so much happier here, with you.”

Mom gives me a weak smile, reassured.

“It’s just the two of us,” I say, holding her gaze.

In Medina’s fantasy, our mother leaves behind a ten-page letter that’s saturated in apologies. She never reads it, because even in make-believe Medina can’t imagine our mother ever admitting fault. In the story, Medina vows that she’ll read the letter when it gets cold someday. Our blood remembers the cold – we grew up in it. She’s been hiding in California, but Medina’s coming home. Maybe she’s the one who ought to start talking to therapists.

Mom doesn’t say anything else, just wraps her arms around me as we lay on the bed together. I can feel the moisture from her face – snot, tears, spit – soaking into my shirt. I feel the exact moment when she falls asleep, her head resting that much heavier on my chest. When I know it’s safe, I gingerly slip out from underneath her.

“Where are you going, baby?” she stirs, edge of panic in her voice.

“Kitchen. You want another beer?”

“No,” she sighs groggily. “Makes me too sleepy. Are you coming back?”

“Do you want me to?”

She doesn’t hesitate before nodding, firm and decisive. A flicker of anger goes through me,  though I know I won’t have the heart to reject her like she did to me a few days before. I make my way to the kitchen and pour another drink, washing down another uncertain handful of pills for good measure.

I wasn’t lying when I told her I was happier. There’s no need for it. I can be exactly what I am without fear of disappointing anyone. I’m not the son my father hoped for, or the brother Medina thought she knew. Mom takes me as I am, without preconceived expectations. In that, there is freedom.

I go back to my mother’s room. Her chest rises and falls, even and deep as she sleeps. Tucking myself at the foot of the bed, I count the inhales and exhales until I slowly drift away with her.

 

***

No expense spared. _That’s the phrase that comes to mind the moment we arrive at the vineyard. The view is impressive as-is, a veritable dream come true for any outdoor wedding enthusiast. Now with all the lights and flowers and décor in place, I can’t imagine a single design magazine that would turn this shoot down. It almost seems a waste to limit it to the local rag mag. Brag mag, me and Medina used to call it._

_For all the money, time and planning that went into this singular day, the ceremony is incredibly short. From my front row seat, I watch my father and Ava exchange their misty-eyed vows. My father promises to love and cherish Ava for the rest of their days, for better or worse. Somebody should tell her that my father’s devotion comes with a clause: don’t ever decide to go crazy. All contracts will be rendered null and void._

_I’m trying not to listen to what they say. If I don’t remember, Mom won’t be able to drag anything out of me later. It’s only to torture herself, and I don’t want to give her the ammo. Instead I stare at my sister, standing dutifully behind my father with bouquet in hand. She’s beautiful, finally grown into her long, skinny limbs and saucer eyes. She stands more confidently now too, more self-assured. So much of our lives she chose to hide behind me, never really having friends or hobbies of her own. Once she found surfing, she never really needed me again._

_I watch her big, amber eyes, but when I notice the twitch of her mouth form a smile, I know she isn’t watching our father. I follow her gaze to the other side of the platform, where Adrian stands behind his mother. He is smiling, too._

_The real party begins immediately after the nuptial formalities. Being the groom’s son, I’m not as anonymous as I like to be. The caterers know my face and my age and won’t serve me. I waste half an hour chatting up one of the cute, young servers before she refuses me too._

_It was stupid not to bring anything with me. My last dose is wearing off, and I’ve become alarmingly sober. After being caught red-handed at the last family affair, I didn’t want to risk the same thing happening tonight. I removed temptation by leaving everything at home. It seemed like a good plan when I was contented and high, but now I couldn’t regret it more._

_The sun is almost fully set, the sky a deep purplish black. The faintest orange arch sits low on the horizon, casting the endless rows of grapevine in black silhouette. I wander off to find a quiet place to sit alone. As I round the corner of the building I smell a familiar smoke, sharp and pungent. A group of young guys freeze and gawk at me nervously, the kid holding the joint keeps it low at his side in a feeble attempt to hide it._

_“Can I get a hit?” I ask, and watch them all visibly relax._

_“Sure man,” the one with the joint says through a lungful of smoke he had been holding in._

_He passes it to me and I take a long hit, immediately feeling the edge come off._

_“You’re that Phil guy’s son, aren’t you?” One of the stoners asks me in a lazy Californian drawl._

_“Yeah,” I say. “How do you know my dad?”_

_“We don’t really,” another boy pipes up. “We’re Adrian’s friends. I’m Derrick.”_

_Derrick. The name sounds vaguely familiar. It occurs to me that these are the guys Medina surfs with at Manhattan Beach._

_“So why didn’t you stand with your dad? Not that I minded having a clear view of Medina’s fine ass,” Derrick laughs. “She dresses up nice. Finally looks the part of little rich girl.”_

_“It’s complicated,” I answer, ignoring his other comments._

_“Right,” he drones sarcastically. “Must be hard living the lux life up in those hills.”_

_I can feel the flush in my cheeks. I’m too strung out for this, and I have a short fuse anyway. I stare Derrick down, daring him to say one more word._

_“There goes the little princess now,” the boy with the lazy voice points off towards the fields._

_I look in the direction he’s pointing and see my sister and someone much taller – undoubtedly Adrian – walking far off down one of the rows. I turn from my unpleasant company and start to follow them._

_“Go save her, rich boy!” Derrick calls after me. “Don’t let her mingle with the commoners!”_

_I’m far down the hill now, at the outer edge of the vineyard rows. The vines are thick and it’s so dark that I’m not sure which direction I last saw Medina go. I keep walking forward, straining to hear her voice._

_After a few minutes I hear a familiar giggle and start walking faster. A stray branch juts out and scrapes my face. I don’t slow down, determined to find my sister. This charade ends tonight._

_“…you’ll love it. Nobody cares where you’re from or what your family is like. It’s like… a do-over.” Adrian is talking low, but his voice carries on the wind._

_“The surf isn’t bad either,” Medina adds._

_“True,” Adrian agrees. “If you can find time between the homework.”_

_“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Medina laughs. “I don’t have to study as hard as you.”_

_“Is that so, Brainiac?”_

_I’m close now, finally catching sight of them a few paces ahead. I stumble up from the path behind them, snapping a twig underfoot. They stop walking and turn back to look in my direction._

_“Jim?” Medina calls._

_“So when were you planning to tell us?” I seethe, closing the gap between us. “When we’re boarding the fucking plane?”_

_I’m practically nose-to-nose with her, staring her down and demanding an answer. She puts a hand to my chest in attempt to back away, but I stand my ground._

_“Hey man, get out of her face,” Adrian comes to Medina’s defense, putting his hand on my shoulder._

_“Don’t touch me!” I snap, slapping his hand away. “You stay the fuck away from me.”_

_He puts his hands up, not looking for a fight. “Just calm down, alright?”_

_“I’m not talking to you, Val. I’m trying to talk to my sister.”_

_“Stop it! Jim,” Medina intercedes. “Let’s just go somewhere to talk.”_

_“I’m talking to you now!” I holler. “So are you gonna answer me? When are you telling Mom, because I’m not gonna be the one to give her more bad news.”_

_“I don’t know, Jim. I know I should have said something sooner, but it’s all happening so fast.”_

_“That’s bullshit, Medina! I found the letter in your room over a month ago.”_

_Even in the dark I can see the color drain out of her face._

_“What?” she stammers._

_“When Mom made me pack for you. You were so busy with school, but that was just an excuse. Wasn’t it?” I fight it, but the hard edge in my voice wavers on the next question. “How long have you known you didn’t want to go with us?”_

_She won’t look at me, turning to Adrian instead._

_“Don’t look at him,” I scream. “I’m talking to you!”_

_Adrian gives her a reassuring nod, and she faces me again._

_“The Bayboys told me they saw you buying at Pratt Point. It wasn’t even a week after you got out of the hospital.”_

_Now it’s my turn to be surprised. I try to compose my face so she won’t notice._

_“I didn’t believe them,” she says, crying now. “I defended you!”_

_Adrian moves in close to her, putting an arm around her waist. She doesn’t recoil from his touch but I see her prickle a little. She’s been waiting a long time to say this._

_“At our open house…” She takes a stuttered breath. “I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. You’re not okay, Jim. I don’t want to be around you anymore.”_

_We’re looking at each other, but it’s like I’m seeing right through her. I don’t move, don’t react at all when Adrian ushers her around me and they head back towards the reception._

***

_The last time I saw Medina was in the driveway of the house on Via Neve._

_It was quickly decided in the days following the wedding confrontation that Medina would live out the summer with our dad before making the move for school in the fall, six and a half hours north of Palos Verdes. Far from all of us._

_Mom didn’t put up a fight. Not only that, she even went so far as to help her finish packing for the move to dad’s place. Then Medina’s room echoed, too._

_On the day we left Medina wasn’t home. She told us she would come to see us off and say goodbye, but the morning pressed on and we still hadn’t seen her. When the last of our belongings were loaded into the car, I quickly climbed inside the vehicle and shut the door. And then I saw her._

_She was on foot, walking up the road from the big hill near our house. Mom had just finished locking up the front door when she saw her, walking to the end of the driveway to greet her. I couldn’t hear what they said but they exchanged a hug. It lingered a bit longer than usual, a small evidence of emotion._

_When they broke their embrace, Medina looked straight at me through the windshield. I averted my eyes as quickly as I could but I knew she’d seen me watching. Then there was a light knock on my window and I knew I couldn’t ignore it. Hesitantly, I rolled down the window._

_Medina leaned in, resting elbows on the frame. We were both waiting for the other to speak._

_“You’re really staying,” I finally said._

_It wasn’t a question because I already knew the answer. Medina just gave me her signature look, half-smirk with serious, wide eyes._

_“I love you, Weirdo.”_

_I was quiet for a minute, matching the intensity of her gaze. My lips parted and I felt the words rise in my throat; a sentiment to return. But when Mom sat down in the driver’s seat the moment was gone._

_Mom offered her a ride back to dad’s or wherever she was heading but my sister declined, saying she wanted to go down to the beach. Her hands were still resting on the window frame. Before stepping out of the way, she gave me one last look._

_I fought with myself in the slow drive down our street, away from P.V. forever. I didn’t want to turn back, afraid to see her fade out of sight. Ultimately I gave in. When I looked back, I wasn’t met with a tearful face or waving hand. I saw nothing but a flash of golden hair as she descended the cliff steps._

_Medina knows not to look back. I’m a pillar of salt._

 

***

The house reeks of food. David and my mother have been cooking dinner together every night, creating unnecessarily elaborate meals. Evidently, my mother must not have let on that she’s more of a take-out kind of person, whether it’s from a restaurant or pulled from a freezer. Needless to say, David’s been the one doing the heavy lifting.

The kitchen looks like a bomb went off, dirty dishes and utensils everywhere. Various pans are sizzling on the stovetop and the oven timer triggers at the same time as the microwave. Fanning through the smoke and steam, I make my way over to the sink for a glass of water. Mom is standing over a cutting board piled high with veggies.

“Jim,” my mother says. “Will you take over for me? David says I’m a danger to myself.”

It’s only then I notice that she’s clutching one of her hands, holding it high. Blood is dripping down her arm, drawing a bright river.

“Oh my God,” I say, alarm rising in my voice. “You’re really bleeding. Let me get you a–”

 “I’ve got it,” David says, coming up from behind me.

He takes my mother’s hand and dabs away at the cut with a clean rag, gently applying pressure before securing gauze around her middle finger. He’s deft and assured, handling the situation with ease. I watch my mother watching him, how she grips onto his shoulder.

“I heard all good chefs put a little of themselves into their cooking,” my mother jokes while David tends to the wound.

“I think they mean that metaphorically, dear.”

Mom tries for another laugh, but suddenly goes white.

“I have to sit down,” she breathes, swaying on her feet.

“Mom?” I reach out for her but David is there, under control.

“It’s okay, Jim,” David replies. “I’ve got her. Come here, Sandy.”

“I’m alright honey. Just help David with supper, okay?”

Mom leans on David as he leads her into the living room to put her feet up, fetching a glass of water after she’s situated. I turn my attention to the cutting board, disinfecting the counter where droplets of blood still remain. Sticky little rings have already formed at the edges and I scrub to wipe them away. For a moment I swear I can taste the metallic tang. I stare at the bloodstains as they absorb into the paper towel, going from bright red to pale orange as they expand on the fibers.

David clears his throat. “Thanks for filling in. My sous-chef hasn’t mastered basic knife skills yet.”

He’s lighthearted and joking, but I don’t want him to make fun of her.

“Anyone can cut themselves,” I assert.

David’s uneasy smile retreats.

Crisis averted and dinner plated, we all convene at the dining table a half hour later. David checks on my mother’s finger and assures her that the cut isn’t that deep. She refuses to look. Instead, she changes topics.

Her hesitancy creates a physical presence in the room. I stir the food on my plate disinterestedly, watching my mother. I can tell what she’s going to say before it even leaves her mouth.

“Medina will be here next week,” she spits out. She moves quickly onto the minutiae of travel plans and sleeping arrangements, as if she can bypass the storm my sister’s name conjures.

“…was thinking we could set up the air mattress in the living room. Or maybe–”

“Just give her my room,” I interrupt, rising from the table. “I won’t be here.”

Mom tries for a laugh, incredulous. “What are you talking about? It’s Christmas, you can’t leave.”

Ignoring her, I go into the kitchen to make a drink. I decide to abandon the pretense of moderation, taking the whole bottle back with me to the dining room. I pour three drinks one after another, slamming them down quickly. My heart hammers like I’ve just run a marathon.

David has been quiet, but as I take the last drink he leans over to my mother and whispers something in her ear. Her demeanor changes then. Suddenly, she’s emboldened.

“Jimmy, I don’t think a boy your age should be drinking that stuff.”

I look her directly in the eye. She blinks, a little crack in the veneer, then aligns herself upright. I see David sit up taller in his seat as well as he reaches for my mother’s hand.

“Really?” I seethe. “You didn’t seem to mind when I was thirteen, and it hasn’t seemed to bother you since.”

David clears his throat, preparing to speak.

“No,” I aim in his direction, breaking eye contact with my mom for the briefest of seconds. “You don’t get to talk.”

“Jim, stop it! Don’t talk to him that way.”

“Oh c’mon, Mom – you don’t honestly care about him. And if you do then I don’t understand why you ever left Dad. You’re just letting some other asshole order everyone around.”

“What are you talking about?” my mother shouts. She stands, obstructing my view of him.  “David is nothing like your father!”

“Yes he is,” I assert, rising as well. “He treats you like you’re helpless and you just let him. Next thing you know he’ll be telling you what food you can or can’t eat and what your dress size should be.”

“You’re wrong!” she yells, shoving me back when I approach her.

Undeterred by her attempts to keep me away, I close the distance between us. “Maybe I am. He does seem kind of soft. You’ll probably destroy his soul long before he has a chance at yours.”

She slaps my face as hard as she can, tearing the bandage on her finger open. I’m vaguely aware that David is standing now too, his hand resting firmly on my mother’s shoulder. But she won’t look away from me.

“You don’t want me to drink? Fine,” I hurtle the bottle against the wall and it shatters the big family portrait, the one Mom had Dad painted out of. “But you better make sure that’s what you actually think. Not this fucking stranger.”

 

***

The sky is moonless and the park is endlessly dark. I told Devon he could find me here, after he called in a panic. He didn’t give a reason on the phone, but I know something big is troubling him. My head feels so full I don’t think I have enough space for his problems too, and I have half a mind to stay hidden in the shroud of trees when I see his car approaching. I linger in the darkness a moment longer, debating my decision to meet with him.

“What the fuck, man,” Devon gasps when I finally knock on his passenger side window. “Don’t be sneaking up on me.”

“Sorry,” I apologize as I climb in the car.

Devon is on edge, immediately locking the doors again after I take my seat. He fishes around the center console until he finds the little baggie he’s looking for. Dipping a little tool into the powder he snorts up the residue, looking around nervously for signs of other cars. Devon never usually does harder stuff.

I stay quiet, waiting for him to speak first. The heater is blasting, pumping the cab full of warm air. It’s pleasant at first until I notice the scent emanating from my coat: the thick food-smell that fills our house and permeates everything has clung to the fabric. No one has even cooked there since the dinner incident a few days ago.  

“I’m so screwed.” Devon finally says after successfully hoovering up the contents of the packet.

I hesitate, waiting for him to elaborate. “What’s going on?” 

“He’s getting released. Amanda thinks he’ll be home after Christmas.”

Devon takes out a cigarette. I see his hand shaking in the flame of the lighter.

“Tyler?” I ask. “I thought he had another year.”

“Good behavior or some shit. Apparently he had a parole hearing this fall.”

A pair of headlights rounds the corner. Devon cranes to watch the vehicle through the back window, falling silent until it fades out of sight.

“I am so fucked. Amanda’s already starting to show…”

I don’t know Tyler or what he’s capable of. Judging by Devon’s level of fear and paranoia, I’m sure he isn’t someone to make a habit of crossing.

“If I need somewhere to hide out, it can’t be with one of the Wolverines. It has to be someone Tyler doesn’t know…” Devon’s eyes plead with me. “At least promise me you’ll take Amanda, if it comes to that.”

“You really think he would do something to her?”

“I don’t know, man. She seems to get clumsy when he’s around.” He takes a deep drag of his cigarette. “Lots of running into the wall and tripping down the stairs, if you know what I mean.”

We’re both quiet, the only sound the hum of the car’s heater and the soft sizzle of Devon’s cigarette.

“You know what I was thinking about the other day?” Devon asks. “Remember that tree fort we built in the woods? We wanted to build a whole city and just live out there forever.”

“Tree City,” I say derisively, laughing at the uninventive name. I hadn’t thought of it in years.

“Yeah, not a very clever name. We should’ve done it though… We were determined little shits.”

“We gave up on the idea after we killed that squirrel and tried to cook it.”

Devon laughs. “Nah man, it was your sister. She started crying and said she didn’t want to play anymore. Then you told me you wouldn’t go without her.”

“Oh yeah,” I nod.

“I could have survived. Kill or be killed.”

For a fleeting moment after he said the words, he looked exactly like the scared little boy I remembered. Medina was never scared. She could just always find better ways to survive.

“How is Medina anyway?” Devon asks, tossing the butt of the cigarette out the window.

“Fine. She’s visiting soon.”


	4. Atmospheric Electricity

Sunshine agrees with her. It always has. I’m sallow, refusing to glow even when I lived on the water. In my sister’s story she always describes herself as the awkward, less attractive twin. I’ll give her the social outcast, but she was never anything short of beautiful.

I was out all night with Devon driving around, listening to music and sharing various substances. I intended to ask if I could stay with him and Amanda, but after hearing about the Tyler drama I thought better of it. I still couldn’t bring myself to go home right away though, desperate to avoid the arrival of my own unwanted houseguest. But after we ran out of gas and out of drugs, I figured I might as well get on with it and go home.

Looking through the front window of our house, I can’t tell if I’m awake or dreaming. I don’t know when I imagined I’d see my sister again, but this feels both too soon and like not enough time has passed. In an entire lifespan, six months shouldn’t make that much difference. But I know this wasn’t mere separation – it was total forsaking.

Her smile looks easy. She clutches a mug, blowing gently as the steam rises, comfortable in pajamas in the dim morning light. Mom’s lips are moving but I can’t decipher anything she says. She’s wearing her old bathrobe again and I realize it’s been at least six months since I’ve seen that, too. Medina listens to every word she’s saying, her clear eyes sharp and bright.

A gust of wind beats against the side of the house and I can’t stand the cold any longer. I make my way towards the back side of the house, hoping to sneak in through the kitchen unnoticed. The creak of the hinge gives me away, and before I can scurry down the hall my mother is calling out to me.

“Jim, is that you?” She hustles into the kitchen, thighs chaffing together. “Where have you been? I almost called the police.”

“Sorry, lost track of time,” I lie. “I’m gonna go lay down.”

I’m speaking low and fast, keenly aware that my sister is just the next room over. Anxiety washes over me. I can feel my legs start to tremble and my skin break into a cold sweat. I want to believe it’s just from the comedown.

“Hey.”

My sister’s voice. I wasn’t quick enough.

“Hey,” I respond too quickly, looking away as soon as I catch sight of her leaning in the doorway.

Golden Medina. Her long, wavy hair cascades around her shoulders. When I looked over she was smiling at me, steady and easy, but I couldn’t return it. _Go to your room,_ I repeat in my head, but my legs won’t let me. I remain frozen even as she crosses the kitchen floor and wraps me in a big hug.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispers, just for me.

A jolt runs through my chest and there is tangible pain, like stepping on a live wire or sticking a finger in a socket. It demands immediate reaction. My arms go lamely around her as well but I can feel them tremble. I don’t dare speak, afraid my voice will waver.

“Go get cleaned up,” our mother instructs me. “I want to take you two out today.”

Medina lets go of me and I hurry into the bathroom to shower, obeying my mother’s directives on autopilot. I can’t slow my mind down. I need something to level me out. I take the world’s quickest shower so I can get to my bedroom and open the dresser drawer. Fifteen minutes later, showered, nerves calmed, I lay down on the bed so I can steal a little sleep.

Mom wakes me up. I’m not sure how much time has passed but I know I haven’t gotten enough rest. It feels like I could sleep the rest of my life and never be satisfied. Everything hurts, even keeping my eyes open. I barely manage to put my shoes on and fall into the car before I’m nodding off in the backseat again. I avoid their gazes and the blackness takes me. I don’t need to look to know they’re watching.

By the time we pull into the little diner, I’m feeling much better. A kind of full-body euphoria has taken over, and I couldn’t care less where I was or who I was with. Mom steers me into a booth and takes the seat next to me, while Medina slides in the other side. Mom tells her she wants to sit across from her so she can look at her pretty face.

The waitress takes several minutes to get to our table, though we’re only one of three occupied tables and the other two have been served already. But after she returns with our drinks, she’s already pushing to take our orders. Mom gets biscuits and gravy.

“The perfect brunch food,” she justifies.

Medina confounds the waitress for several minutes when she asks if they have any vegan options. She ends up ordering a baked potato and deconstructed salad. I smile politely when I tell our server that I’m all set. Mom orders me waffles with strawberries and cream. With a barely concealed eyeroll, the waitress walks away and our mother starts in.

“So,” Mom begins. “You’re vegan now?”

“Yeah,” Medina squirms on her bench. “Adrian had been feeling more convicted about it, especially after his first year at veterinary school.”

“I thought he already was vegan?”

“Vegetarian.”

Mom stares blankly, not realizing there’s a difference. “I don’t get it, you’re so skinny already. You don’t need to diet.”

And there it is. What’s really bothering her.

“It’s not a diet, Mom,” Medina puts on a little laugh, trying to keep the wolf from descending. “Horrible things are done to animals all for the selfish enjoyment of humans. Neither of us want to contribute to that system anymore.”

Mom bristles, Medina blushes. Our mother feels attacked but Medina won’t backpedal. Instead she tries for diversion.

“Besides, I’m not as skinny as Jim,” she jokes.

There is stone silence as Medina’s comment hangs in the air. I can practically hear the wheels of my mother’s head turning, but I speak up before she can.

“So do you two like, share a brain now?” I ask my sister. “Adrian feels convicted and suddenly you do too?”

My sister stares at me before responding. “I listen to what he has to say. He’s a pretty interesting guy. You’d know that if you got to know him.”

“Yeah, well I’ll have to schedule that sometime when you don’t have your nose up his ass.”

Medina smiles. “I’m serious, Jim. You might be surprised how much you like Adrian.”

“I really doubt that,” I mutter under my breath. “I know all I need to know about him.”

“How do you figure? You’ve never even talked to him – only come at him screaming.”

Our waitress returns with our food then, accidentally setting the biscuits and gravy in front of Medina. My sister corrects her and she slides the dish in front of my mother.

“You don’t look like you could finish all that anyway,” the server quips, making a lame attempt at friendliness.

For the rest of brunch our mother picks at her plate and watches my sister happily munch on her vegetables. The cream on my waffles melts into the rest of my untouched food. All I can think about is sleeping.  

 

***

Mom has been calling in to work. She says it’s to spend time with me and Medina, but I can’t help noticing that she doesn’t invite David on our Christmas tree hunt, or how when she needed ingredients for holiday baking, she drove the extra fifteen miles to the big box store instead of going to Berringer’s.

“So when am I going to get to meet the elusive David?” Medina asks.

“He’s a very busy man,” our mother offers. “It’s not easy owning your own business.”

I chime in. “Especially not when your employees call in three days in a row.”

It’s a low jab, and I feel bad before I even finish the sentence. She glares at me and in the tense silence I can feel the energy shift. The thinly applied veneer that my mother has worked so hard to maintain is starting to crack. Tears well in her eyes though she’s staring daggers at me.

“Are you and David okay, Mom?” Medina asks in her quiet voice, the one she always uses when she knows our mother is sitting on a precipice.

“Why don’t you ask your brother how things are with David.”

Medina looks to me then, confusion clouding her expression. I return the look as I flit between my sister and mother’s faces.

“You’re joking,” I say. “If the other night made him bail, then I’m sorry but I did you a favor.”

“How do you figure?” My mom sneers.

“If he couldn’t handle that fight then there’s no way he’d stick around for long, especially once you start to inflict your insanity on him.” I say, calloused. “I just expedited the process.”

The tears threatening to fall from my mother’s eyes finally break free. She gapes at me for a moment before quickly retreating down the hall. Medina waits until she hears the click of her bedroom door before speaking.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Whatever, Medina. Like you haven’t been calling her a psycho since day one.”

“But I never–”

“Never what?” I explode, suddenly livid. “Never said it to her face? Believe me, you didn’t have to. She’s always known exactly what you think of her.”

I stare at her, chest heaving. “Turns out Mom’s been right about a lot of things.”

“Like what?” Medina asks, voice rising. “Why don’t you just tell me what your problem is instead of acting like such a freak.”

She freezes, shakes her head. “I didn’t mean that,” she stammers. “I just want you to say what you mean.”

“Like you do?” I ask, smiling.

 

***

I wrestle with myself all evening. Mom has locked herself in her room, only coming out to make quick dashes to the refrigerator or pantry before retreating back into solitude. Boxes and bags of junk food are loaded into her arms, reappearing in the trashcan later, empty. Other people drop little emotional clues to decode; my mother is a tornado of neurosis.

Medina sits at the table with her laptop and I lounge in the living room, but Mom doesn’t say a word to either of us on her ventures out. The only sound made is the crinkle of cellophane and slippered feet as she shuffles around in her yellow robe. On about her sixth visit out of the kitchen, I look up and find Medina staring at me.

I pour myself another drink but instead of returning to the couch after, I head down the hall. For a split second I consider going to my mother but I can’t bring myself to approach her door. Instead I shut myself in my room, hoping to forget about the day. Where pills and sleep normally help, tonight they fail me. I’m still awake when the house is dark and silent, and when a knock comes at my door at two in the morning.

I want to believe it’s my sister. This is how all of our serious talks used to happen. My mind instantly calls up images of our childhood together, not so long ago, and all the late-night conversations we had long after we were supposed to be sleeping. But when I hear my name being gently called, the familiar voice isn’t Medina’s but my mom’s. I rise to answer the door, hating myself for the blatant sense of disappointment I feel.

On the other side of the door, my mother is crying.

“Jimmy?” she sobs. “I can’t sleep. Would you come sit in my room?”

I open the door. Her hair is matted, clothes soiled with dribbles and crumbs from the most recent binge.

“Sure, Mom.”

She breathes a shaky sigh of relief, face crumpling in a fresh surge of emotion. She reaches for my hand, squeezing tight as she starts to pull me across the hall.

“Just give me a sec, okay?” I ask.

She looks surprised but eagerly nods, dropping my hand and wringing hers together. Her eyes never leave me as she backs away to her room. She stands in the doorway, waiting.

“I’ll be right there. Just get into bed.”

“Okay,” she whimpers.

I dart behind my door and shut it without a second glance, leaning heavily against it as I fight the hot tears rising inside. My throat feels like it’s closing up; I want to scream but all I can manage to do is clench my fists into tight balls and press them against my eyes. I hold my breath, afraid that the next intake of air could be the one that breaks me open. I don’t want to slow my mind down or let any of these feelings form a voice. I want to silence it all.

When I finally breathe again, I feel like I’m hyperventilating. My heart is beating so fast and loud and I’m breathing so quickly that for a moment I think I’m going to pass out. I brace myself against the dresser as I go down on my knees, a cold sweat breaking out all over my skin. The choking sensation is still present which my rapid, frantic breaths only serve to emphasize. I don’t know what this feeling is, this dry drowning, or how long I stay gripped against the bureau.

After a while my breaths even out and the racing of my heart slows. I reach up into a drawer and pull out my stash, swallowing another dose dry. On shaking legs I manage pull myself up and look into the mirror, surprised to see tear tracks on my face. I stare in amazement, unable to break away until I hear a commotion in the hall.

“Jim?” my mom whispers as she pushes the door open.

She takes it in for a moment, the sight of her son leaning over a dresser scattered with pills of various assortment, shaking, sweating and tear-streaked. I’m no better than her at dropping cryptic codes – this is a flaming crisis.

Without a word I move towards her, collapsing on her shoulder as she wraps her arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Her voice is haunted and trembling when she replies. “Let’s get some sleep, baby.”

 

***

Scrambled memories are nothing new. I wake up and sift through the last few days’ worth of conversation, trying to piece together my current state of affairs. Is Mom mad at me? Would I be in her room if she were? What was the last thing I said to Medina – are we fighting? Have we ever stopped fighting?

I don’t come up with too many answers before a more pressing need is addressed. My stomach is on fire, twisted and wrong. I agonize on the bed for a few minutes before deciding I need to get to the bathroom. Standing up confirms it – a violent wave of nausea rolls through me. I barely have time to shut the door behind me before lunging for the toilet. But the retching offers no relief, the contents of my stomach barely more than bile. I’m in anguish, every muscle in my body tense and vibrating. I know what can take the edge off, but I don’t have the strength to stand yet.

The urge to vomit eventually fades, though it isn’t helped by the smell of something sweet in the air. When I finally emerge from the bathroom I realize the smell is coming from the kitchen. I brace myself against the walls as I make my way down the hall, feebly determined to get a glass of water. I hobble along quietly, not wanting to arouse my mother’s attention prematurely. But as I get closer, I realize she isn’t alone.

“Do you remember your eighth birthday?” my Mom is asking.

“No, not really,” I hear Medina laugh in reply. “Why?”

I freeze, hiding in the hallway. All I can see from this angle are trays of sugar cookies, steam rising as they are pulled fresh from the oven. My mother’s familiar hands and Medina’s skinny fingers come into view every so often as they scoop the treats from tray to cooling rack.

My mother sighs, holding back. A flash of her hand passes as she shovels the cookies with a spatula.

“Jim was so upset that day,” she finally relinquishes. “He refused to come out to the party. When I went to go check on him, he said he didn’t want to turn eight.”

Medina sniffs. “He was probably just mad he had to share a party with me.”

“No,” Mom offers, self-possessed and certain. “It was almost like he thought I was telling him he _had to_ grow up. So I tried explaining to him that it’s just something everybody does: they grow big, get a job, get married… He said, ‘Not me, Mommy’.”

Mom trails off for a minute and I can’t read the silence that follows. The timer on the next batch goes off; after some commotion my mom continues her story.

“When I asked him why, I thought he was going to tell me it was because he was going to be a superhero or that girls have cooties or something like that. But he told me he wasn’t going to grow up because he’d be in heaven.”

Mom pauses again, taking a deep breath. “He was so serious – so somber. I never forgot it, and to this day I almost–” Mom chokes, her voice growing tinier. “I almost believe him.”

“Mom,” Medina breathes, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I’ve been trying to keep him from that fate his whole life. I never wanted him to be sad, or lonely,” she cries, tears of confession. “Lately I’ve been thinking that I can’t save him.”

Medina tries to speak again, but her voice is so low I can’t make it out. Mom doesn’t pause to take the comfort anyway.

“I’ve failed him in so many ways – both of you.”

A long moment passes and neither of them speak. I can barely hear myself think in the deafening void.

“It’s okay, Mom. Everything will be okay.” My sister’s voice is small, reassuring. “We just have to be united.”

“Yeah?” Our mother asks, filled with more hope and doubt than one word can contain.

“Yeah.” Medina sniffles.

I hear them shuffle around, and I dart further into the shadow of the hall as they come into my line of vision. My mom is wrapping Medina in her arms, and my sister squeezes back with just as much sincerity.

“You know,” Medina starts to say. “I guess I do remember one thing about that day. Dad wasn’t there, was he?”

“No.” Mom simply answers, foregoing the opportunity to tear our father down. The impulse is gone now that there’s no need for the façade. Now that her children see.

“Even then?” Medina asks.

Mom nods her head. “Even then.”

 

***

I hide in my room the rest of the day. There’s a disconnect growing in me; I don’t feel like I’m a character in my own life. God has His favorites and the rest are just scenery. We add color, but we don’t change the big picture.

I snort another line. Thick, chemical snot drips molasses-slow down the back of my throat. My stomach still isn’t steady. I think of the morning and gag again, swallowing down the feeling solely to retain the drug.

I hate the bright, blue sky today. It’s toying with me, as if something beyond the winter waits. I’ve been laying on the bed in silence for hours, my eyes fixated on the woods across the street. I stare until the sun is setting and the line of trees creates a blanket of shadow. I hope if I look long enough I’ll become like one of the trees, or their thoughtless leaves. But I stare and discover that I’m just the child my mother remembers. A child who knew too much, too soon. If I could go back, what would I tell him?

A knock at the door.

“Jim?” Medina asks, timid in the low-light. “Do you want to help me wrap presents?”

“Huh?” I sit up, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Come wrap presents with me. It’s our tradition,” she says, as if I need reminding.

Something quivers in my heart, reaching towards her. More than a feeling, it’s instinctual response. Autonomous of me. But my learned behaviors are most dominant now.

“Not right now, Medina.”

A door closed. The tension in the room drains and I feel a fresh wave of guilt roll over me – my only emotion.

“Hey,” I call out before she leaves. “Bet you’re missing out on the big winter waves, huh?”

“I don’t care about that, Jim.”

She leaves without another word, without ever looking at my face. I slowly lay back down to watch the trees.

 

***

Sky Lake is eerily still. Birds don’t even venture out, and I can’t say that I blame them. A stiff, relentless wind tears across the surface of the water, carrying along a continuous dusting of snow with it. In some places, the wind has swept the frozen body of the lake clean, exposing the ice that caps the black water below. I close my eyes and can almost convince myself I hear waves, until two currents of air collide and a ghostly whistle echoes all around. The ocean never sounds this lonely.

Everything is a dim grey – the foamy sky, the particle-filled air, the covered ground. My car is dark until I turn the key to the accessory position and press the overhead light. I pull out the baggie in my pocket and fish around for a little bump. The fresh serving hits my bloodstream and everything floats away. My eyes roll shut and I’m still in the wave. It doesn’t take any talent to surf this backdoor.

A knock at my window sends me jumping out of my skin.

“Thought I recognized your car. What’s up, stunner?” Amanda peers into the vehicle as I roll the window down for her.

“Mind if I join you?”

Imperceptibly nodding, I unlock the car and she climbs in the passenger seat. I scramble to put my things away but she is quick to stop me.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” Amanda says, gesturing to the baggie. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” I sniff, swallowing the drip that coats my throat.

“So how has your sister’s visit been?” she asks, giving me the up-and-down. “Not great, I take it.”

I swallow again. “I just needed to get out of the house for a while.”

“Holidays are the best, aren’t they?” she says, sarcastic. “Forced quality time with a bunch of people who can’t stand each other, all mutually agreeing to fake it for the sake of one day.”

I nod in solemn agreement, sucking back another hit. I’m aware of Amanda’s lingering gaze, her attention completely diverted by the sight of the white powder.

“You ever tried banging it?” she asks.

I give her a blank stare, unsure at first what she means. “What?”

“You know, like… shoot it up?”

She reaches into her purse, pulling out a blue, plastic container that rattles with mysterious contents. My mind goes empty. Fear floods me, mixed with some strange form of adrenaline. She lifts the lid and the first thing my eye catches is the glint of a needle.

“It’s so much better this way,” she pauses. “I could show you how.”

I can’t speak. I watch in a trance as she shimmies out of her winter coat, going through what looks like a well-rehearsed routine. When the tourniquet is secured tightly around her tiny arm, I find my voice again.

“Amanda wait,” I interject.

“It’s okay,” she says, comforting and maternal. “I know what I’m doing.”

Paralyzed, all I do is stare as she punctures herself with the syringe. The dose disappears inside a vein, and within seconds she’s gone. Her big eyes roll backward and she slumps over, all tension leaving her body as the euphoria hits. I’m shaking, nervous and hyper-aware. The seconds tick by excruciatingly slow while I wait for her to talk again, move again, anything. I look at her rounded belly and then panic, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

“Amanda,” I call out. “Amanda, wake up!”

Life is slow motion. I move my ear close to her face and try to make out the sound of her breathing, though I struggle to hear anything besides my own frantic gasps. Finally, she sucks in a sharp breath. Brown eyes flutter open and she moans in a sigh of ecstasy.

She grabs my face, suddenly animate again, and closes the distance between us. Her lips are a sticky, pink vacuum that lock me in. Everything is pulled in by the force of her gravity: needy fingers in my hair, needy tongue on my teeth. The taste of the drugs is still in my own mouth, but now the basenote is her perfume; marshmallows and raspberry. I feel high on that alone.

The kiss ends abruptly and Amanda’s hands release my face, trailing a slow tickle in featherlight touches. Her eyes shut again but now she smiles to herself, lost in another world.

“You’d like it, Jim,” she slurs, somnolent and dreamy. “I wish you would come with me.”

 

***

My stash has run dangerously low. I make several calls to Devon before I even leave my bed in the morning, but the sun sets again without a return. Trapped in the house without any options, I make repeated trips to the kitchen to fix myself a drink. I hear my mother make just as many visits to the fridge but instead of alcohol, she’s fixing leftovers and microwavable meals. Medina gives us both dubious glances, the most scrutinous looks reserved for me. Our mother doesn’t notice or pretends not to. Instead, she changes the focus to tomorrow’s plans.

“I was thinking it would be nice if all of us went to the Christmas Eve service at the little church down the road. It’s been a long time since we did something like that.”

“Church, Mom?” I balk.

She avoids my eyes. “Yeah, so?”

“Why bother?” I ask. “You don’t get brownie points with God for showing up once a year.”

“I just think it’d be nice, that’s all.” My mother busies herself with tidying up the kitchen island, discarding crusted paper plates and wiping up crumbs.

“Me too,” Medina chimes in. “We used to go to Aunt Christine’s church every Christmas.”

“And you hated it,” I remind her. “You always had to wear a dress.”

“I just hated dresses,” Medina clarifies. “The church part wasn’t so bad.”

I shrug, still not totally convinced.

“Let’s just go,” Medina tries a final time. “It’s only one hour of your life. And if it’s truly awful, I promise to give you all of the candy from my stocking.”

She waggles her eyebrows, dangling the offer before me.

“Fine,” I say, dryly adding, “But I’m not wearing a dress.”

Medina stares at me for a minute, the smile on her face slowly breaking out into a huge grin.

“I’d pay good money to see that,” she jokes along.

“Me too!” Mom adds, her laughter mixing with my sister’s.

 

***

Still no word from Devon. I wake up at some ungodly hour of the morning and check my phone in vain hope. All of my joints ache and my head feels like it’s on fire. I open my dresser drawer and contemplate the last of my stores. It’s not enough to last the coming day, if I take anything now. Sighing, I try for sleep again but the lumps in the mattress feel like boulders, and the drag of the sheet feels like sandpaper on my skin. Giving up, I make my way out to the kitchen.

A single light is on, the one over the island. Medina is there flipping through _Surfer_ magazine.

“Hey,” she whispers to me. “Why’re you up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I answer. “Why are _you_?”

“Same. I’m still not adjusted to the time difference, I guess.”

“Hmm,” I intone, making my way to the medicine cupboard. I rummage around for the bottle of Tylenol PM, swallowing a handful with a glass of water.

I glance over at Medina, who quickly darts her eyes back down to the page in front of her.

“So what’s Frieda Zane up to these days?” I ask, pulling up the barstool next to her.

I see my sister prickle, sitting up a little straighter. “Just took her fourth World Champion title. Everyone was saying Kali whatshername was gonna take it from her. But she pulled it out.”

“Kali?”

“You know,” Medina gestures her hands wildly. “That girl from Australia? I mean, she’s great, but no one can touch Frieda.”

“You’re such a fangirl,” I tease, shoving my shoulder into her.

Medina playfully shoves me back, giggling when it nearly knocks me off the stool.

“I seem to recall you got a little star-struck yourself that day Dan Edder surfed with us.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, my mood turning sour with the memory. “Before he turned out to be a total pervert.”

Medina goes quiet, her thoughts lost in secrets she never told me. “He told me I was a good surfer.”

I frown. “You _are_ a good surfer. You don’t need some sun-bleached stoner to tell you that.”

Medina chuckles a little and the scowl on my face subsides.

“I’ve missed you, Jim.”

I smile weakly in return, but the fire in my head has spread to my chest.

 

***

Late in the afternoon I get a text from Devon. “FIVE PM” is all it says. I look at the clock, cursing. I don’t have much time to come up with a plan. My mother and sister want to get dinner before the Christmas Eve service.

“You better get around,” Medina warns me. “Mom wants to leave soon.”

“Okay I just need to get dressed.”

I go through the motions of getting ready, but my mind is on a one-track loop: I need to get more drugs. After putting on the only button-down shirt in my possession, and the one wrinkled tie I can find, I’ve come up with the excuse I need. I rush down the hall to find my mother, but she is already standing at the door with my sister. They’re both dolled up in pretty dresses and impractical shoes. My mother has even done her makeup, something she hardly ever does anymore.

I don’t have any time to waste.

“Hey,” I greet them. “I’m really not feeling good. Would you guys mind if I skipped out on dinner and just met you at the service later?”

My mom is immediately concerned, but there is doubt written all over Medina’s face.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Mom asks, walking over to me. “If you’re not well then maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

“No, don’t do that,” I counter, too quickly. “I’ll be fine, I just need to lay down for a while. Go ahead – I’ll meet you at the church.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Mom,” I smile, trying to look both reassuring and vaguely ill.

She kisses me on the forehead, lips lingering as she checks my temperature. She returns my smile and I’m stabbed with guilt. There’s no hint of mistrust in her eyes, but my sister’s silence is a testimony to the truth. Still, they leave without further protest and I bury all nagging feelings of blame. Guilt won’t stop me from what I’m about to do, so I have no use for it now.

I pace around the house until the hour comes, checking and re-checking my phone. Finally another text comes in, and Devon asks if I’m home. I respond immediately, my fingers shaking. A nervous energy fills my whole body, a bottomlessness in my guts like soaring down a rollercoaster. Somewhere in the back of my brain I know that this is fucked up, but I can’t consider the alternatives. As far as I see there’s only one choice now, and it’s coming to my doorstep any minute.

I hear the rumble of Devon’s car engine as it pulls into the driveway. I don’t even grab my coat to go out to meet him.

“Hey man,” I call as Devon steps out of the vehicle. “I was starting to think your phone got disconnected.”

I notice Amanda sitting in the driver’s seat, but her face is all wrong. She won’t look at me. The wiper blades brush off the fine layer of snow that’s melted on the windshield, and I think I see her crying.

“You’ve got some nerve, you piece of shit,” Devon spits, closing the distance between us. “You think I’m fucking stupid?”

He stops with his nose inches from my face. I try to back away but he grabs my tie, locking me in place.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my mind spinning.

“What am I talking about?” Devon repeats.

With his free hand he draws back and lands a punch to my eye. I stagger back, off-balance, but he wrenches me upright and connects another blow to my face.

“I’m talking about giving drugs to my _pregnant_ girlfriend, you motherfucker.”

He winds back for more, the words only fueling his hatred. His fist flies at me, but when I move my arms to protect my face he goes for the ribs, knocking the air out of my lungs.

“Devon, stop!” Amanda screams, coming up the driveway.

My legs have turned to jelly beneath me as I struggle to take a breath in. I fall down to my knees but Devon still has a grip on my shirt, yanking my face upward for another hit. Amanda is closer now, pulling Devon as he wrestles to keep me in his grasp.

“Stop it!” she yells again, clawing at his arms. “It’s not his fault!”

“Get off me!” Devon hollers, losing his grip on me as he shoves her away.

Amanda slips backward on the icy concrete, landing hard. Distracted, Devon abandons his assault on me and makes his way over to Amanda as she holds her head in stunned silence. He touches the back of her head and helps bring her to her feet, his fingers coming away red.

I finally manage to draw a lungful of air, choking on the blood that I take in with it. I try standing when Devon turns his attention back to me, but I can’t regain balance.

“Don’t contact either of us again. If you do, you’ll get worse than a black eye.”

Devon stares down at me, pulling back his coat to reveal the metal handle of a gun. I stay motionless, not even daring to breathe until he walks away. He goes to the passenger side of the car and opens the door.

“Amanda, get in,” he says, though his eyes never stray from mine.

“I’m so sorry, Jim,” Amanda chokes through her tears, scrambling to obey Devon’s orders.

“Shut up!” Devon shouts, shoving her down in the seat.

When she’s back inside Devon slams the door and walks around to his side. I’m vaguely aware of the blood that’s running down my face, ruining the only decent shirt I have, but I can’t stop to assess the damage yet.

“By the way,” Devon calls out. “Thanks – I think I just found the perfect scapegoat for Amanda’s little situation.”

His lips curl into a humorless smile. “I wouldn’t wait around for Tyler to show up, if I were you. He doesn’t let people off with a warning.”

Devon peels away after those final, ominous words, but I remain frozen in place. My hands are like two blocks of ice, cold and rough as the ground they press against. I bat against the blood that pools in my eye and then I notice all the droplets of red surrounding me. Rising on unsteady legs, I kick snow over the evidence. I realize it won’t matter once my sister and mother look at my face, but at least they won’t have to see this carnage. As I take final stock of the driveway, I notice something else out of place.

Although I’ve only seen it once, I recognize it instantly. The blue, plastic container sits nestled in the snowbank.

 

***

“Open the door, Jim!”

“Your brother’s sick, Medina. Let him rest.”

“Like hell he is. Open the door or I swear I’ll break it down!”

Medina rattles the handle as she repeatedly bangs on the door, each knock more forceful than the last. I slowly rise from the mattress and flip the lock for her, but when the door flies open I’ve already got my back turned to sit again. I’m so dizzy I can hardly stand.

“Where were you?” she demands. “I was calling and you didn’t even have the decency to pick up the phone. Are you so strung out that you can’t figure out how to answer a call?”

“Medina!” Mom shrieks.

“No, Mom – you can’t keep letting him get away with everything,” she shouts in reply. “Jim, look at me!” 

Medina digs her fingers into my shoulder as she forces me to look up. Her teeth are bared, ready for a fight, but I see the shock register on her face the moment she looks at mine. For a moment she’s rendered speechless.

“Oh my God,” our mother gasps. “What happened? We need to get you to the hospital.”

“It’s fine, Mom,” I exhale. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look fine to me, Jim. Tell me who did this to you.”  

Medina backs away, allowing my mother full access to me. But I don’t want any of their questions, and I especially don’t want any of my mother’s sympathy.

“We need to file a police report. Whoever did this has to–”

“Mom!” I snap, surprising even myself. “I said I’m alright – can you just drop it, please?”

My mother’s indignance quickly dissolves into tears. “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Because you won’t like the answer,” Medina interjects, low and resolute. “He doesn’t want to tell you anything because this is all a mess of his own making.”

Medina and I look at each other now.

“He’s doing this to himself, and we can’t keep pretending that things are just going to get better on their own.”

“Shut up,” I caution under my breath.

Mom steps in front of me, facing her daughter in a protective stance. “You think Jim did _this_ to himself?” she gestures, pointing at me.

“It’s those people you hang out with, Jimmy,” she cries, turning back to me. “If you don’t want to give names, that’s fine. I’ll figure out who’s responsible.”

“Stop being so blind!” Medina screams. “Don’t you care? He’s killing himself a day at a time and you refuse to acknowledge it!”

Fighting against the rise of emotion, I force myself to speak. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you Medina?”

My sister’s brown eyes turn on me again, tears falling in a steady line.

“Dead, or locked away in some mental facility,” I provoke her. “Whichever comes first.”

“What are you talking about,” Medina asks, her voice hoarse and spent.

“Diligent weekly visits until I bash all my teeth out, isn’t that how it goes? I’m curious – was the suicide premeditated, or did I really believe I could go to the moon?”

Medina’s lips part, but no words come out. All the color drains from her sun-kissed skin. My whole body has broken out in uncontrollable tremors, but I couldn’t stop the words if I wanted to.

“It’s not a pretty ending, but I think I did better than Mom. Heart attack in a motel, nothing but the company of empty food wrappers to see her off.”

“You read my story,” Medina says, small and wounded. “You read my story?”

Our mother is scared, her eyes darting frantically between the two of us. “Medina, what’s wrong? What is Jim talking about?”

But Medina has already ran out of the room. I walk over to my mother and put my arms around her, pressing her close.

“Please tell me what’s going on, Jimmy.”

I pull back and kiss the corner of her mouth. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

 

***

**_Water licks the shore of the lake. There is no beach, only a muddy bank drenched in moonlight. As the night grows colder the air begins to crystalize. Fat puffs of snow fall from the sky and into the body of water, melting as soon as they land. But there is one place they start to gather – a cold, blue form that rests in the switchgrass._ **

**_The snowflakes fill the air, falling in a layer so thick that the ground resembles an endless desert. Ice sparkles in undisturbed perfection, diligently building itself throughout the night. Trillions of crystals lock together, no two the same but all made for this._ **

**_Underneath the snow, the cold, blue form is still. Blackened fingers disappear, buried beneath all of the white. In time, all else is hidden, too. Not even the moonlight can reach below where the open, blue eyes are frozen._ **


	5. Red Giant

I was alone. I thought that was the worst part of waking up in the hospital. To be without family, scared, confused and sorry. But the worst came later.

Dad took a red-eye from Paris, arriving sometime the next day. He walked calmly into the family consultation area where my sister and mother sat with me. On the exterior he seemed composed, shaking the psychiatrist’s hand as he entered the room. They exchanged names of different prescriptions, talking low in their best doctor’s voices. When the psychiatrist stepped out, my father finally spoke to me.

“Really, son?” was all he said, his eyes penetrating mine.

I couldn’t speak, only hang my head in shame.

 

***

I roll over, wincing at the pain in my ribs. My left eye is swollen nearly shut, and dried blood is caked tight to my skin. There’s too much pain to deal with today.

My mind is still in a fog as I reach for my phone. Panicking, I notice the date and time. It’s Christmas day, and late in the afternoon. I sit up and my stomach protests the sudden rush of activity. I sway on the edge of the mattress, spinning, and my foot comes down on something wet. The bottle of whisky I nursed throughout the night has spilled, the remainder lost to the carpet. I can’t even bring myself to care, my only thoughts centered on what awaits me outside of this room.

When my vision mostly stops swirling, I dare to stand. My legs are wobbly but otherwise manage to hold me up. They move me to the door, then out into the hall. I don’t want to face them, but I have no choice.

The house is dim and quiet, the late-afternoon sun already retreating for the day. I wonder briefly if anyone is home. I don’t want to believe they would have left without telling me, yet I also can’t believe they let me sleep the whole day away. I search all over the dark house, growing more annoyed the longer I can’t find anyone. My malaise subsides when I notice my mother’s car parked in its usual spot in the driveway.

“Hey, Jim,” Mom speaks from behind me, coming into the living room.

I jump in surprise. I didn’t hear her coming, scuffling along in her slippers and disheveled robe. She walks past me and sits in a heap on the couch, flipping on the TV. The Hallmark channel is on, broadcasting another banal holiday movie. Mom peels wrappers off a hoard of candy stashed by her side, staring mindlessly at the set as she pops chocolates into her mouth.

“Mom,” I say, stepping in front of the television. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, fumbling with a particularly stubborn piece of wrapping.

I look around at the unlit Christmas tree; the collection of unopened presents beneath it.

“Where’s Medina?” I demand, losing patience.

“Oh, she left. Last night I think.”

“What?” I ask stupidly, stepping closer. She won’t look at me.

“You should be happy. It’s just you and me now.”

Her eyes never leave the screen, never even blink. I watch her mouth as she chews one piece after another, trancelike. I feel sicker than before.

“Mom, I’m gonna go get ready. I’ll get dressed and then we’re gonna have a good day. Okay?” I watch her unmoving eyes. “Mom?”

“Okay.”

I rush back down the hall, feeling the bile as it creeps up the back of my throat. I reach my room and start riffling through the landscape of dirty clothes that blanket my floor. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find, but I keep turning pockets inside-out. In a ratty pair of jeans I find something – a small bag with a dusting of white powder. I carefully tap it out onto the dresser and suck it up, but it’s not enough.

I’m keenly aware of Amanda’s kit, which I carefully tucked beneath my mattress. I haven’t been able to open it yet. I know there could be a fix inside, but I also know what else I’ll find. I don’t trust myself to leave it alone. The possibilities are a black pit I refuse to explore.

I get dressed and leave my room quickly, darting into my mother’s. I know about the pills she keeps hidden in the vase. She stopped camouflaging them in over-the-counter bottles, now preferring to stash them like a dirty secret. I mostly leave them alone, except in times of desperation. I carefully turn the jar over and shake out the bottle. I take three, then four of the tiny orange bars and make quick work of crushing them. After a few minutes, all evidence is gone.

But as I make my way back down the hall, I realize that the evidence is written all over me.

My limbs feel like they’re moving at a different speed than the rest of my body, languidly trailing behind. The hallway feels longer than it did before. I lose balance, bashing my shoulder into the wall and knocking a framed picture from its hook. It clatters to the ground, the sound amplified in the quiet house. I move a hand over my half-opened eyes; it raises molasses-slow. I can’t feel my face and my fingers are freezing.

“Jim?” Mom asks, peering over the back of the couch.

“It’s okay,” I slur. “Hang on.”

I pick up the pace on my way to the front door, trying to look sober. I disappear outside and return a second later with a plastic shopping bag retrieved from my car. I walk over to Mom, beaming with expectation.

“I didn’t wrap it, but this is for you,” I try to hold a smile but I can tell it looks wrong. Mom is staring at me with a look I can’t read.

“Take it,” I say, shaking the bag in front of her. She doesn’t move, so I open it for her.

“Look,” I hold up the plush, turquoise bathrobe. I can feel my hands tremble; I see the purple of my cold nailbeds.

“Feel how soft it is,” I press the fluffy collar to her cheek, catching a tear as it breaks free. “Mom?”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you,” she says, her voice thick with tears. “I should have made you stay in therapy. You needed help.”

Stunned, I don’t respond at first. Caught off-guard by the sudden ambush, my first reaction is defensive.

“I was in therapy for months – do you think it made any difference?” I laugh weakly.

If she was staring at me before, now her eyes look anywhere but at mine. She fidgets, anxious and conflicted. I’m eager to circumvent wherever this conversation is leading, so I try for distraction.

“Come on, Mom – it’s Christmas. Can we not do this, please?  Let’s play a game or something.”

She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t speak.

“Look, I’m fine,” I say, careful not to slur my speech. “I just need to figure things out on my own.”

“No, Jimmy,” she retorts, immovable. “That’s not how this works.”

A flame burns within me, searing through the medicated drowsiness.

“Not how _what_ works? Why does everything have to be on your terms?”

“Because I’m your mother!” she screams. “And this is my house! There will be no more alcohol, no more disappearing with friends doing God knows what… And you have to start some sort of treatment again.”

I roll my eyes. “You don’t get to start playing Mom now just ‘cuz you’re mad at me.”

“I’m serious, Jim. Things have to change.”

“Yeah? Then why don’t you try seeing a shrink?”

Her eyes flit away, wounded.

“When you and Dad were at each other’s throats all the time, I was your equal. The ‘man of the house’. You couldn’t function without me – you wouldn’t even get out of bed!”

She looks so small sitting there, withdrawing back inside herself. I feel for her, but fight the instinct to protect her like I always have. I’m breaking open, words unmoored.

“You were perfectly content to watch me give up my friends, my girlfriend… You were even jealous of Medina! But then you start feeling better and suddenly I’m problematic?”

She shudders, laboring to keep her voice under control. “I’ve made mistakes with you, I know that. Huge, unforgiveable mistakes.”

“You can’t change it, Mom. You can’t turn into somebody else.”

She shakes her head. “We’ll fix it by moving forward. I’m telling you that I won’t tolerate it anymore – any of it.”

“Any of what?” I challenge. “Say it.”

Mom stands, putting her arms around me. Mine stay limp at my sides.

“I’m so worried about you.”

I back up, shoving her away. “You can’t even say it.”

“You’re sick. Your sister and I just want to help you.”

“Don’t talk to me about Medina!” I scream, pacing the floor, thoughts wild and untethered. “You play people against each other to get your own way. Medina doesn’t want anything to do with us and you made damn sure of that.”

Mom closes her eyes, trying to shut out my voice.

“Do you want to know why everyone leaves?” I come close again, practically spitting the words in her face. “It’s because you’re fucking crazy.”

Rebellious tears wet my face, falling freely in spite of my anger. I can’t see straight through the chaos in my head, the world a rolling, red blur.

My mother looks at me head-on. Though tears of her own are falling, she won’t be shaken.

“You’re just like him,” she whispers thinly. “A bully. Just like him.”

It’s a crushing betrayal, and she knows it. For as much as I want to believe that she made me into the person I’ve become, I can’t shake this unnamable feeling inside. There is a deep, pervasive understanding of my own responsibility. Years’ worth of guilt convenes and accuses my conscience all at once, and the last place I can stand to be is here, with her.

I run out of the house, not bothering to grab my coat or car keys, and race down the street under the banner of the wide, black sky. My feet pound the concrete in rapid rotation, obeying the only order I have at my command. Millions of cold, white stars light the way, but one shines brighter than most. It always heralds the end.

 

***

Sky Lake is frozen. Overconfident, I don’t slow once I reach it’s glassy surface. I keep running until I run out of breath; until the shore is an unsafe distance behind me. I come to an abrupt stop when I slip on the ice, laid out flat in the center of the lake. 

Lying there, suddenly inert, I feel my mind begin to slow. I focus on my breath, on the stillness of the sky above, and try not to think about the water beneath me.

I remembered that day in Medina’s story, when we were six and our father brought us here. I remember the terror I felt when the waves crashed into us, huge and unstoppable. Medina took my hand, unafraid, leading me out deeper and deeper. I was scared but I trusted her, edging further from the shore until our father came in after us. He only punished Medina, giving her a spanking and grounding her when we returned home. Just like I feared the water, I was afraid of our father’s disapproval. I stayed away from my sister the rest of the day, not wanting to share in her blame.

I’ve always used her strength. Medina sees herself as an outlier, a freak – awkward and incapable of assimilating. But she’s the brave one, able to do what she wants and strong enough to stand behind it. I always cared too much of what they thought.

I wish the water would swallow me now. It could take me down, unwitnessed except by this bevy of stars. Sirius is here, too, steady like my sister’s watchful eyes. They don’t miss anything, not even this. The hardest thing to admit is that she knows it all, even during these months of silence and all my attempts to block her out. She still understands the deepest parts of me. There isn’t anywhere I can go that she won’t see me.

I wonder which parts are true. If Medina really picked out a star for my mother and me, or if we’d have to die first. I’m never certain which one I hope for. Laughter breaks through me then, deep and devastating. I realize that I’m not afraid of the unknown anymore. It’s all that waits for me.

I want to be like my sister. For once in my life, I’ll go first.


	6. Falling Star

Everything feels different now, under the weight of this plan. It compels me back to the house. Although I’m scared, I won’t let myself feel it. I don’t feel lighter, so much as ethereal.

A list of tasks marches through my mind. I repeat them like a mantra the whole way home, the words almost losing their meaning. I have to keep saying it, because the smallest thing could rob me of focus. The sound of bullfrogs in the bog across the street; the blanching moonlight that encases the house; the scent of evergreen when I walk into the living room.

I blink in the dark, arrested by the smell of home. It hits me then, powerful and heartbreaking. Everything we’ve lost and can’t have again is mocked by these shadows. I swallow against the thick, choking feeling in my throat, willing my heart to slow and my breathing to steady. If I don’t keep moving, I know I’ll fall apart.

I go back to my mother’s room. Step one of the tasks. Enough time has passed that I know she’ll be asleep, and my certainty is rewarded when I push open the door. She breathes deep and even, looking far more peaceful than I know she’s felt in years. Part of my mind is whispering, gently pleading with me to curl up on the foot of the bed and forget this night ever happened. But the voice is tired and doesn’t speak with authority.

I tip the vase on the dresser, and the orange bottle rolls deftly into my hand. My eyes never leave my mom, but I’m not watching as defense. I wish she would wake up. I want to say a full goodbye, but I can’t spare any more time. I lean over the bed and kiss her warm cheek, step two, and leave her room.

A cheap bottle of vodka is next. It’s all I have left in the cupboard. I make a face with each disgusting swig, but never once consider mixing it. It feels strange to think of taste at a time like this. Something so inconsequential should cease to matter. Yet here I am, gagging on the ethanol. 

I lose track of how many lines I’ve done, but the orange bottle doesn’t rattle anymore. All of its contents are ground to an immaculate, fine powder. I’m sloppy, careless as I lean against the dresser, accidentally brushing particles to the floor. But I’m not worried, because I won’t have any needs tomorrow.

It’s harder to bring the glass to my lips. My body is filled with lead, blood clotting in my veins. I press on the big vein in my arm, amazed that when I release it, blood flows. I take off my shirt and watch the life within me vibrate – pulse fluttering in my throat, breath filling my belly. I wonder how it manages to go on when I do so much to stop it.

_You’re stalling_ , I murmur to myself. I know what’s next on my list, and the thought makes me impossibly sober.

I reach under the mattress and find Amanda’s kit, ready and waiting for me. My hands shake uncontrollably as I place the small box in my lap, but the disconnect is complete. I don’t know what I’m doing but that doesn’t factor in. I’ve committed to the act and it’s all that I can see. This has to happen.

The lid opens with a click, that one little sound reverberating in the room. The syringe lies in wait, bright orange cap covering the needle. I pick it up and stare at it, rolling the barrel between my fingers. But then my vision centers on something else, just out of view.

Peaking out from under a pile of clothes, two black, beady eyes stare up at me. I set the kit aside, reaching down to grab the toy – a stuffed whale. A present from Medina, something meant to cheer me up when I was in the hospital. I press my face into the fuzzy blue fur, hating how much it makes me miss her. Yet I packed it up with all of my other belongings and brought it here, unable to let go.

I’m motionless, still clutching the toy to my chest when the door swings open.

 

***

Medina looks just like my mother when she’s scared. The same brown, serious eyes and worried crease in the brow. She doesn’t say anything as she watches me, or as her eyes wander to the open container next to me. I close my eyes tight but the tears still escape. I can feel the heat of my sister’s gaze and the sting of her condemnation as the door clicks shut.

I don’t fight it anymore. A strangled sob breaks free – the first of many waves to wash over and drown me. I want to pull up, to find my way out, but I can’t get any air.

“It’s okay, Jim.”

Medina’s voice sends a shockwave through me, and I open my eyes as I realize she’s still here. She moves to sit next to me on the bed.

“I thought you left for good,” I manage to say between shaking breaths. 

She pulls me close, casting her arms around me. “I wanted to.”

Her grip tightens, hands twisting on my skin.

“What are you doing?” she cries. She shakes me, asks the question a second time.

I can’t answer. Too exhausted to run, I let her hold me and the world readily slips away.

 

***

The night is disjointed and never-ending. A cold sweat breaks me out of sleep, but cool hands press into my forehead and lull me back under. My skin prickles with cold and I shiver until she covers me. When the dream comes again and blackened fingers hold me down, she reminds me of what’s real.

“I’m sorry, Medina,” I think I hear my voice cry.

“Shh,” she quiets me. “I’ve got you.”

I dip in and out of consciousness. At another point I hear the rattle of a car engine. I shoot upright, panicked, searching the room. Medina coos gentle assurances – she’s still here – and I hesitantly lay back down.

“It’s just Mom,” she promises. “Going to work.”

“I have to talk to her,” I cough, tasting blood.

Medina brings a wet rag to my nose, dabbing at the red. “You will.”

 

***

The next time I open my eyes, intensely yellow light is coming in through the window. The room smells sour, like spilled booze and dirty sheets. I see the dust motes floating in the air and realize I haven’t ever opened the curtains in this room. A familiar sound tears me away from my thoughts – fingers flying nimbly over a keyboard. I sit up and see Medina, laptop balanced on her thighs as she types away.

“School stuff,” she flashes her lopsided grin, closing the lid once she notices I’m awake.

“Oh,” I groan, laying back down. “I thought you were working on a sequel.”

“You’re such a dick,” she says, laughing.

We look at each other for a meaningful moment. It’s hard to know what to say.

“Don’t get up,” Medina says, breaking the silence. “I have something for you.”

She shouts outside the door a few minutes later. “Close your eyes. No peaking.”

I promise her my eyes are closed, and swear I’m not lying twice more before she believes me and comes in the room. I hear her wrestling with something and my curiosity grows by the second.

“Now?” I ask.

“Now.”

I open my eyes and my sister is standing there, propping up a brand new Martin guitar.

“It’s a lot better than the one you pawned,” she says, beaming at me.

Dumbfounded, I reach out for the instrument. I hoist it into my lap and place my fingers on the strings, letting muscle memory take over. Shapes come back to my hands where my mind has forgotten; I strum a couple of disconnected chords before going still. I want to stay quiet, to preserve the peace of this moment forever, but there are questions in my mind that have long awaited answers.

“Why did you write that story?”

The moment I say the words, Medina’s smile wavers. She hangs her head, and it’s almost more than I can bear. But then, before I’m ready, she begins.

“When they found you and took you to the hospital, I was so relieved,” she says, her voice a bottled storm. “I spent that whole night before so worried, thinking I would never see you again.”

Her big amber eyes scan me, watching for warning signs.

“I told you how they found you on the beach, but I never told you about that night. How faraway you seemed… how _different_. It was like I couldn’t see who you were anymore.”

The first tears swell in her eyes. I want to look away, but I owe her this.

“I couldn’t wait to talk to you again, to see my Jim. But when we got to the hospital, it’s like you weren’t even there. Like you were already gone.”

She lets out a heavy breath, hurriedly wiping at her cheeks.

“I wanted to believe that I was just imagining it. That you had been through too much to immediately snap back to the person you were before. So I gave you time, and space. I started writing because it helped me piece our story together – to make sense of everything that happened to our family.”

My eyes falter for just a moment but she catches it, pausing until I look back.

“When the Bayboys told me that you were using again, I really didn’t believe them. I thought there was no way that you’d ever do that to me, to us, ever again.”

She laughs, though it’s a hollow sound.

“It was pure denial. I refused to acknowledge when you’d fall asleep in the middle of a conversation, or when you said things that didn’t make any sense. I did it for as long as I could. But avoiding the truth doesn’t make it untrue, it just makes it easier to ignore. It wasn’t until I found you at our open house that I couldn’t keep lying to myself anymore.”

I look away again, the memory too clear in my mind. Medina grabs my hand, and I know we’re both transported back to that day.

“That was when I decided I couldn’t move with you. I know I didn’t tell you that I applied to school, much less that they accepted me, but I hadn’t made peace with any decision until that moment.”

Medina squeezes my hand and we both look up.

“Once I saw for myself that you were using again, I realized.”

“Realized what?” I ask.

“I can’t have you in my life if it means spending every day worried that I’ll lose you,” she says, soft but absolute. “It was hard even for me to understand, but I loved you too much to stay.”

 

***

The first time I use Dad’s credit card, it’s to book the flight to San Rafael. Medina tells me I can’t use money as an excuse if I’m serious about getting better. She tells me Dad wants this for me and that it shouldn’t matter how I get there, only that I go. She lets me yell and cry and make excuses, but she doesn’t let me leave the room. So the day after Christmas, before I’m even fully sober again, I’m booked for inpatient treatment at Anderson Recovery Center.

Medina tells me we’ll surf every weekend – she’ll only be a little over an hour away at school. She changes her flight to travel with me later in the week, and I’m grateful for her but I know it won’t help when we face Mom.

But I’m wrong. Mom gets home that night, weary from a long day at work but wearier still from all that we’ve put each other through. She cries when I tell her I’m leaving. She cries, but lets me go.


	7. Halo

Trust was destroyed incrementally and unfailingly. It has to be rebuilt that way, too.

Medina saw me with a needle, and although she believes me now when I tell her things never went that far, I have to admit that it was possible. Not quite inevitable, but I permit her misgivings. I don’t fully trust myself either.

The doctors who treat me say it will come in time. They say it’s harder than the physical stuff, even if for weeks there are tracers – phantom sounds and hallucinations of unsettling, imaginary things. The doctors talk about chemical balance and SSRI’s, saying my brain will heal itself, too.

Although I agreed to treatment, once I actually arrived on campus I found myself profoundly resistant. I didn’t want to feel okay, my misery a familiar, well-furnished home. Trying to feel better, to communicate, has been a total demolition of self. But I’m ready to build something new.

Medina and I talk every day, like the wall never existed, though it hasn’t been without obstacles. Family and off-campus visits aren’t allowed during treatment, we soon discovered, so there were no idyllic surfing trips together on the weekends. But I left it in the hands of the wellness gods. I don’t have a doctorate in anything, much less healthy boundaries.

Medina promised me that everything would be okay because we’re together again. Ninety days seemed like a lifetime because of that reunion, but we made it. When I graduated from the program, my dad came to the service and told me how proud he was.

“At least this graduation had a ceremony,” I teased, immediately regretting it when I saw my father wince.

“I love you, son,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “Always.”

 

***

We wait until Medina’s spring break the following week to celebrate with Mom. On the flight back to Michigan, Medina lays her head on my shoulder as she looks out the window. 

“When can we go surfing again?” she asks, whispering sleepily.

I tense up.

“I don’t know,” I laugh, nervous. “I can’t even remember the last time…”

As I quietly search my memories, I can tell Medina is doing the same.

“Was it that pathetic wave machine?” I ask. “At the waterpark?”

Medina grimaces. “Like that counts.”

She goes quiet. I think she knows the real answer but doesn’t want to say. There are some moments I’m glad I’ve forgotten.

 

***

Mom doesn’t stop talking from the moment she picks us up at the airport. She tells us half a dozen times about the dinner she’s prepared, and how happy she is to see us again. When we get to the house, she pulls me aside for a private moment.

“I want you to let me know if anything starts to bother you, the very second it happens. Okay?” Her eyes search me over, manic. “I just want you to have a good time.”

I look at my mother’s hopeful expression, painted so thinly over the apprehension on her face.

I smile, kissing the back of her hand. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”

“No, Jimmy,” she shakes her head. “I don’t want you to think about that.”

“You don’t have to worry, Mom,” I urge her. “You and me are alright.”

She makes a strange face, waving me off.

“Well, of course we are,” she chuckles. “You’re my baby! Now let’s get you something to eat.” She turns quickly, obscuring her tear-streaked face as she leads me into the kitchen.

She never brings David up during our visit, but she does mention her new job as a receptionist in a dental office. She likes scheduling the appointments and going out to lunch with her coworkers. The ladies she works with like to complain about their husbands and disrespectful children, but our mother tells us she feels sorry for them. She no longer has any husband problems.

“And I have the two greatest kids in the world.”

 

***

Sky Lake is a small place. At least that’s what I tell myself when my mother comes to my room to inform me that Amanda is at the front door, asking to see me.

“I told her when you would be here,” my mother admits. “She kept coming around, asking about you. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do.”

“It’s okay,” I say, though I’m not sure that it will be. “You can let her in.”

After a minute I hear Amanda’s voice, growing closer as my mother ushers her to my room. When she finally appears in the doorway, I have to stop myself from audibly gasping. Impossibly, she’s even thinner than she was before. Her complexion is spotted, the skin of her face sunken against high cheekbones and big, doll eyes. Even her hair is different, brittle and wild; a bad dye-job faded to a peculiar, carroty orange. I wouldn’t recognize her if I passed her on the street.

“Jim,” she says. “You look great.”

“It’s been a while,” I finally observe, hesitantly rising to meet her.

“Your mom says you’ve been doing really well.”

“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Better. Not exactly _well_ ,” I laugh.

Amanda smiles and her teeth protrude from her taut, thin face. Her eyes are heavy, wet.

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” she murmurs, voice breaking a little. “You’re lit up.”

The room is quiet as she gathers her thoughts. I’m tense, waiting for her to do whatever it is that she came here to do.

“I’m sorry for the way everything went down. I threw you under the bus to save my own ass, but Devon knew the truth the whole time. He just wanted to take it out on somebody.”

Her eyes flick up to mine but she doesn’t hold it for long. Her words are fast, spilled out like a long-awaited confession.

“Tyler gave him a good beating when he was released. Turns out one of the Wolverines had already told him about the baby. He was just keeping Devon close so he could exact revenge.”

“Where is he now?”

“Ran off with another girl. Somewhere in Ferndale, I think.”

I nod. “What about Tyler? Are you guys back together?”

She laughs, hollow. “He’s back in jail, waiting for a hearing. He broke parole before he’d even been out a month.”

None of this news is surprising, but I can’t help entertaining the what-if’s. I wonder where I’d be in this whole mess had I stayed.

“I don’t think we would’ve stayed together anyway,” Amanda continues. “Getting pregnant with another guy wasn’t exactly grounds for a fresh start.”

At the mention of her pregnancy, we both fall silent again. I see her face twist up, and I know what’s coming.

“I lost it,” she barely whispers, throat constricting the words.

She can’t look at me now, head turned away as she cries. I put my arms around her, letting her have it out. There isn’t anything to say.

After a minute she’s sniffling, wiping at the tears on her cheeks.

“I guess in a way my problems are solved, right?” She tries to smile, as if anything could be made better for it.

“Anyway,” she sighs, backing away from me. “I just wanted to see you and say I’m sorry. You won’t be coming back any time soon, will you?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, honestly.

“Keep taking care of yourself, Jim.” She starts for the door but pauses as she reaches it, turning back around.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering – did you happen to find something of mine, that day in the driveway?”

She looks at me and I can feel it – the insidious, unspoken thing. It’s the look she’d give me when asking for something without really asking for something, making suggestions without ever using words. It’s a language common to everyone who lives in the dark. I haven’t lost that linguistic ability, but I want to call it out. It’s the only way to diffuse its power. Honesty turns a light on, and there’s no where for darkness to hide.

“Yes.” I say, watching her carefully.

She only nods, dropping her head. “See you around, Jim.”

 

***

On our last day in Sky Lake, Medina and I spend our time in the backyard rebuilding the firepit. The cracked and blackened bricks that once lined the fire ring have collapsed, tall grass and weeds growing up between them. We work together stacking them back up, laughing at ourselves when the spiders and pill bugs make us jump, crawling across our fingers and sandaled feet. After the pit is reassembled, we start a fire and our mother brings out some food. We roast hotdogs and s’mores, and when it gets dark Medina and I point out constellations, telling our mother their names.

As it gets later, the air grows moist and cool. I can feel the condensation soaking through my toes and chilling my face, but I just scoot closer to the flames. Medina zips her jacket up to her nose but seems content to stay by the fire, too. Our mother is the only one who doesn’t seem as charmed by the notion anymore.

She says she’s tired, but when that elicits no response she tries a different tactic, asking if we’re as cold as she is. We both fib a little, saying we’re fine. We want to stay out under the stars.

“Jimmy,” my mother finally says. “Will you come talk to me before you go to bed?”

Though I had been bracing for it, a chill still runs down my spine when she says it. I agree and she kisses my forehead, lingering with her lips pressed to my damp skin. She says goodnight, only to Medina, before heading back inside the house.

I watch the fire, but I’m aware of my sister’s eyes on me.

“Just say what you’re thinking,” I say. “I won’t get mad.”

“Okay,” she hesitates. “I don’t think you should go to Mom’s room tonight.”

I don’t look at her, just watch the weightless flakes of ash float up in the sky. Like snow in reverse.

“It’s like Mom needs so much, she can’t help but take everything,” Medina cautions.

“I know the line,” I say, trying to reassure myself as much as her.

“I just want you to be careful.”

I shift in my chair. I know something she doesn’t know, and I feel my old urges fighting to take over. They tell me to stay quiet, keep secrets, harbor hurts. I remind myself that I’m rebuilding.

“She wants to know about the story,” I spit out, like ripping off a band aid. “I don’t really know what to tell her.”

I can feel her apprehension as she processes this news, but then the silence changes. She is calm, contemplative.

“Tell her it was catharsis,” she says. “A way to deal with everything I was scared of.”

She looks at me, the words as much for my benefit as my mother’s. “I didn’t know how it would end.”

The last time we watched a fire together, it was threatening to devour everything. This time, though it has the potential to be just as destructive, the blaze is contained. I watch it lick the charred surface of the bricks we built around it, unable to spread. I throw another log in and within seconds it starts to burn.

We nod off outside. When the fire dies down a layer of dew settles over our bodies. We wake up freezing, teeth chattering, and drag ourselves inside well past four in the morning.

I forget all about my mother’s request, but don’t feel guilty for it.

 

***

Saltwater stings my nose and throat, burning through my brain. Coughing, I stumble back to shore to catch my breath and rest a while. We’ve been at it since dawn but I still feel like a kook, as if riding a board for the first time in my life.

“You good?” Medina hollers a few paces behind me.

I mutter that I’m fine. She’s been shadowing me all day, always looking out and ready to offer an encouraging word. I’m more frustrated with myself than with her coddling, but still my replies have gotten increasingly clipped.

“I think I just need to sit out a while.”

Medina may be watching me, but she has a guardian of her own in the wings. Adrian stands with his surfboard underarm, just behind my sister. His expression is measured and neutral as he listens to us. I don’t blame him for being tense around me – I haven’t given him much reason not to be. When I tell them to go ahead without me, I see his spirits visibly lift.

We’re in his territory, though I guess he’s just as much an outsider at Manhattan Beach as I am at Lunada now. Besides feeling like I’m surfing with two left feet, I’m cagey, suspicious. There are some surfers far out on the water, a gang of five or six guys in their obnoxious wetsuits and neon boards. I keep close tabs on their proximity to us, wanting to keep the distance. I know I’m owed more than a few good beatings for the ones I administered to outsiders who dared to surf my bay.

“You sure?” Medina asks, not wanting to leave my side.

“Yeah. I just need to catch my breath.”

She hesitates a moment longer, mouth forming into that mischievous half-smirk. “You’ll get it back,” she promises.

“Yeah, it’s just like falling off a bike, right?” I flash her my best, widest smile.

Medina laughs. “Yeah, something like that.”

I watch her run out into the water, lining up with Adrian for the next set. They tease one another, splashing water in each other’s eyes and getting into a dead race for the first big wave. Adrian starts out ahead, but I don’t doubt my sister. She’s had to fight twice as hard as any guy for the chance to ride. She’s always wanted it more, and it’s with that dogged resolve that I watch her pull ahead and take the first wave.

She snaps up on her board, fluid and effortless as she cuts across the swell. The water lifts her high on it’s back but she’s cutting through, flying low and steady. The wave starts to coil in on itself, but Medina is at the helm. It bends in her wake as it tries to keep up, curling because she wills it so. Nobody looks more beautiful in the water, more natural. This is her home. For the first time, I start to understand what that means.

I watch the two of them surf for a long time, trying to stay focused. The sun beats down on my skin as I watch, sending ripples of heat through my body. I think about Michigan, and how drastically the smell of the air changes with the seasons. Here, everything stays the same.

There’s a place I don’t want my mind to go to, but it’s grown into a cancer. Even when I’m not thinking about it, I can feel its effect. I tell myself everything will be alright; that I’m doing so much better. I repeat it in my head so much that the words stop making sense. I’m still chanting to myself as I watch Medina and Adrian slip out of sight, too far to distinguish from the other distant, bobbing bodies on the water. I recite the hollow words as my feet carry me back to Adrian’s car, and as I choke in the sizzling interior of the black Mustang.

I find my rumpled street clothes in the backseat. The little bag I pull from the pocket of my shorts feels heavy – much heavier than the tiny, white contents should be. This is how much a lie weighs. I try not to look at them in my palm or feel them slide down my throat as I wash it down with a bottle of water, warm as the air around me. I try to ignore the butterflies in my stomach and the electric, liquid thrill that courses through my brain. I know this is just a fluke. I feel it so strongly that, for a moment, I convince myself to throw the rest of the bag out the window. But it goes back into my pocket. I want to get better.

_I’m alright,_ I repeat to myself.

I know someday I will be.


End file.
